The Celtic Riddle (6 page)

Although I was trying not to look down, something below caught my
eye and I stopped. "Alex," I called back to him, several yards away.
"What was that clue of yours again?"

"I am the sea-swell," he called to me. "Why?" "Hang on a sec," I
said. I was standing over a small cove at the foot of the cliffs. While
on either side of me there was a sheer drop, in front of me there was a
steep pathway, part grass, part mud, that lead down to the water.
Gingerly, considering my choice of footwear, I began to pick my way
down, slipping and sliding on the wet earth and grass. I was two-thirds
of the way down when I lost first a shoe, then my footing, and rolled
down the grassy slope, gathering momentum as I went. I heard the others
shouting above me. For some reason, I wasn't afraid. I knew, somehow, I
would stop in time, and was rather more worried by how undignified I
must look, rolling ass-end over teakettle, than by the possibility I'd
be dashed to smithereens on the rocks. And indeed, the ground soon
levelled out a little on a sandy dune, and I rolled to a stop.

I was lying on sand, or rather pebbles, on a rocky beach at the foot
of the cliffs, a few feet away from the water where a little rowboat, a
skiff, was anchored, bobbing in the surf. The boat was white, where the
paint hadn't peeled away, and the gunwales were blue. It had, as I had
suspected from the top of the cliff, the name Ocean Crest painted on
its prow.

Michael started down the path after me, slipping and sliding as I
had, but so far still on his feet. "Stay there," he shouted. "I'll come
down and help you back up."

"It's called Ocean Crest," I yelled up to him and the others. "Do
you think it has anything to do with the clue?"

I looked about me. The boat's owner was nowhere to be seen. I found
my shoe and carefully picked my way across the rocky shore toward the
skiff, which was just offshore under a large underhang of rock. The
boat, as far as I could see from land, was absolutely empty. I thought
I should take a better look. After all, if this was the answer to the
first clue, there might be something in it that would lead us on, a
note stuck in a fishing basket or something. A little voice was telling
me that I was forgetting my resolve to stay out of this game, but I
ignored it, the tumble down the hill having robbed me of good sense.

The water was too deep and the boat a little too far out for me to
wade out to it, so I thought I'd try something else. I carefully
scrambled up a large rock on the shore, hoping from its height to have
a better view of the inside of the boat. It was, as I'd thought,
completely empty, without so much as an oar to be seen.

As I looked about me from the vantage point of the big rock, I saw
at the foot of a steep rocky cliff toward the end of the cove, what
looked to be a shoe, partially hidden by a large rock. Perhaps it's
floated ashore, I thought, lost overboard on a yacht, or something. But
as I climbed down the rock and moved toward it, I had a flash of
recognition, followed by a sense of being in the grip of a terrible
dream that I couldn't stop, a dream that impelled me, slowly,
unwillingly, toward the shoe. When I got there, I saw the shoe was
attached to a leg. And the leg belonged to the broken body of John
Her-lihy.

Chapter Three

THE ROAR OF THE SEA

I'VE been thinking," I said. This was cause for deep relief for me,
thinking again I mean, after a couple of days of walking around in a
kind of shocked and vacuous haze in which even the slightest mental
effort seemed beyond me. I was still feeling a little shaky, as if I'd
seriously overdosed on caffeine or adrenaline, and jumped at every loud
noise. But I felt at last as if I was starting to come around, all
things considered, the shock of finding John Herlihy gradually fading.
Apparently, however, Rob was not as keen as I was on my return to
relative mental acuity.

"Why do I think this is going to be trouble?" he groaned, setting
two foaming pints of Kilkenny cream ale in front of us on the small
glass-topped table in the bar in the inn where we were all staying.
"We're on vacation, remember."

"I know," I replied, thinking that this was not exactly the vacation
I'd been hoping for, thanks to John Herlihy's unfortunate demise. "But
we came over here to keep Alex company, and this is about Alex. What
I've been thinking," I continued before Rob could stop me, "is that it
might be kind of fun to look for this treasure, this item of great
value that Eamon Byrne talked about."

Rob made a face. "Bad idea," he said.

"Why?" I said.

"You have a rather short memory," he said. "Shock, I suppose,
although imminent middle age can do that to you too. John Herlihy.
Dead. Cause of death still under investigation."

"But he fell," I said. "Drunk as a skunk, if you ask me.

"Something of a tippler, you think?"

"It went way beyond tippling," I replied. "I overheard Deirdre of
the Sorrows refer to Herlihy as the old souse."

"Am I safe in assuming that you are referring to someone other than
the Deirdre of J. M. Synge's unfinished play by that name?"

"Deirdre, the morose-looking maid," I said, "and don't try to
distract me with your erudition." Although I have known Rob for a few
years now, comments such as these never fail to amaze me. I know I'm
guilty of a gross and unfair generalization when I assume policemen
don't read playwrights like John Millington Synge, particularly when
the only policeman I know, at all well, does.

"So you're assuming he just fell over the edge in a drunken stupor,
are you?" Rob asked. There was a tone in his voice that meant I was in
for a bit of a lecture. "You can't just assume that, you know," he went
on, launching himself fully into the topic. "You have to investigate it
thoroughly. Did he just fall, or is there any evidence to support a
suspicion that he was pushed, or even that he threw himself over the
edge? Footprints, signs of a struggle, marks on the body, that kind of
thing."

"I thought you said we were on vacation," I interjected.

He laughed. "Hard to get out of the work mode, isn't it?"

"Not for me," I replied blithely.

"So you weren't eyeing any of the furniture in that fellow Byrne's
manor house, thinking you just might pick up a piece or two if they
were auctioning any of it off now that he's gone?"

"Nope," I replied.

"Didn't you say he was something of a collector? You didn't think a
few items in his collection might find a home in your shop?"

"Not at all," I replied. "Objects of destruction on red velvet are
not quite the look we strive for at Green-halgh & McClintoch."
Well, maybe one or two of those maps, I thought to myself.

He looked suspiciously at me. "And you have not even once worried
just a little about the shop while we've been here? I did notice you
eyeing the pay phones in Shannon Airport the moment we got off the
plane, did I not?"

"I'm not worried at all," I replied. That was patently untrue, and
both of us knew it. I had indeed been eyeing the telephones at the
airport. I did realize, however, that it was the middle of the night
back home, and had managed to restrain myself.

Normally there are always two people in the shop, one to be at the
cash, one to help the customers. When I'm off on buying trips, Alex
stays in the shop with Sarah; when she's on holiday, it's Alex and I,
and so on. But with two of us away, that left Sarah on her own, and
Sarah, who's a whiz on the business and financial side of things, but
not comfortable on the sales side, was a bit nervous about it all. For
a while, I found myself with competing loyalties: looking after Alex or
minding the store.

In the end I asked my ex-husband Clive Swain, who had the supremely
bad taste to open an antiques store right across the road from
Greenhalgh & McClintoch, to keep an eye on the place for me, and
give Sarah a hand if she needed it. This is much akin to Custer asking
Crazy Horse to hold the fort while he goes off for a little R&R, of
course, but Clive, the rotter, had also dumped his second wife and,
when I wasn't looking, taken up with my best friend, Moira, a very
successful businesswoman who, I reasoned, was not so far gone in her
affection for Clive that she would allow him to ruin my store. I just
tried not to think too much about it.

Rob and I were quiet for a minute or two, sipping our beer. I sat
admiring our surroundings, the somewhat prosaically named Hunt Room,
with glowing fireplace, nicely worn green, gold and red-striped sofas
and chairs, the dark green walls lined with prints of English hunting
scenes, and a rather valuable, if not to my taste, oil painting of a
stag cornered by a pack of hounds, over the mantelpiece. I knew what
would happen next, and right on cue, Rob sighed theatrically. "Okay, so
after almost twenty-five years in law enforcement, I can't help myself.
What makes you so sure that fellow Herlihy just fell?"

"Well it was slippery enough. I should know. I took this something
less than graceful tumble down the hill myself, did Alex tell you?"

"He did. He was obviously being very tactful, though. He didn't
mention anything about lack of grace."

"It was quite undignified, I assure you. I was lucky to fall on mud
and wet grass. It made a mess of my clothes, but I wasn't hurt. The
slope was not all that steep, and there were no rocks at the bottom. A
few yards either way, though, and I'd have ended up like Herlihy. On
top of that, I'd only sipped a small whiskey. And Herlihy, as I
mentioned, not only had a reputation for drinking regularly, if
Deirdre's comments are anything to go by, but I noticed he kept nipping
out of the room for a few seconds at a time. At the time it was quite
clear to me that he was sneaking out for a swig or two of something or
other."

"Maybe he was going to check the door, or he had a bladder problem,
or didn't want the others to see he was overcome with grief or
something," Rob interjected.

"I don't think so. His shoes squeaked, and he stopped after a few
steps, just about as far as a sideboard in the hall on which there were
several bottles of booze, I'd noticed. He had another drink, a rather
large one, when Tweedledum or Tweedledee, whichever it was, said how
much he'd get. It was about fifteen thousand Irish punt, by the way,
which these days is worth more than twenty-five thousand dollars. That
should rule out suicide. Why kill yourself the day you come into some
money? When Alex and I left to go to the car, he was helping himself
again, quite liberally, to the drinks on the sideboard in the hall.
It's a wonder he could even stagger to the edge of the cliff!" I
concluded.

"There!" Rob exclaimed. "What did I tell you? You've just added an
element of doubt to your own theory."

I glared at him. "My point, if only you would allow me to get back
to it, is that we're here for a while, pending the results of the
autopsy, so why not look for the treasure?"

"But why would you want to?"

"Well, for one thing it wouldn't bother me a bit to beat those
po-faced women to it," I replied.

Rob winced. "Aren't you being a little hasty in your judgment of
them? What did they do to deserve that?"

"Since you ask, they were horrible to Alex," I said. "When we first
arrived, we were left hanging about the front hall for ages, and I
overheard Byrne's wife Margaret telling Tweedledum or Tweedledee-those
are the lawyers-that she wouldn't have that man in her house. I assumed
she was talking about Alex, although come to think about it, it could
have been the other lawyer, or Padraig Gilhooly, whoever he is. In any
event, Alex went over and introduced himself when we were finally
allowed in, and they wouldn't even shake his hand when he offered it."

"It was a bad time for them, don't forget," Rob interjected.
Sometimes the man is way too nice.

"I know. But Margaret and the two daughters all have the same
expression on their faces, like they've just encountered a bad smell,
or something." I paused. "And there's another reason."

"I thought there must be. The real one, this time, I hope," Rob said.

"Alex just loved the cottage. I could tell, without him having to
say a word. It's a dream come true for him."

"I'm very glad of that. But he has the cottage. What's your point?"

"My point is, now what? How is he going to look after it? Pay the
taxes or water bills? Put in some electricity? Make repairs? Those old
places need a lot of upkeep. And unless he wants to keep crossing the
property in front of the house, which heaven knows, I wouldn't, he's
going to have to put a road in that will cost more than a penny or two,
I can assure you. He's on a pension, Rob! If we could find the treasure
for him, and it really is worth something as Byrne said it is, Alex
could really retire, not just sort of retire and work part time in the
store the way he is now.

"We're here now, aren't we?" I wheedled. "And we're not going too
far until the police conclude their investigation into John Herlihy's
death, although what could take them so long, I can't imagine. Anyway,
we'd get to see a little of the countryside around here, while we
looked, and we might just have some fun."

"I do understand how you feel about Alex, and maybe he does need the
money, but what makes you think we could find it? We don't know the
place at all, or the people."

"Piece of cake," I replied. "After all, you are a policeman. You're
accustomed to tracking down clues. Already we have two of them, and we
know they come from a poem called the 'Song of Amairgen.' "

Rob looked baffled and I felt mildly triumphant, having produced the
name of a poem he didn't know. As rare as the occasion might be, I
tried not to gloat. "Michael Davis is going to try to persuade Breeta
to get her clue out of the safe at the house, and tell us what it is.
We'll then have three of the clues. I think there were seven-the mother
and three daughters, three more counting Michael, Alex, and someone by
the name of Padraig Gilhooly, who incidentally would be about as
welcome in that house as a rattlesnake at a garden party, should he
choose to show his face there-so we're almost halfway there."