The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

by The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

  At first, the fishermen, farmers, and retired pensioners who constituted the majority of the town’s population weren’t sure what to do with me. They had plenty of experience with Americans, of course, with half the region’s population having emigrated at one point or another, and with hordes of Yankee tourists descending on the peninsula each summer to consume breathtaking views of the old country along with gallons of Guinness in authentic Irish pubs. But how to react to a shy, slight boy who knocked on their doors, introduced himself in faltering Irish, and explained he wanted nothing more than to chat a bit and take some notes? Much is made of Irish hospitality, but it turns out it’s only skin deep when you start intruding on personal matters like a language people simultaneously held dear to their hearts and considered a bit of an embarrassment in the modern age. Still, to their credit, the villagers accepted me in the end, and warmly at that, since Ireland is hardly immune to the presence of peculiar people, homegrown or otherwise. It didn’t hurt that I was the only American spending money in Ballynafarragy after August.

  Gradually, I fashioned a routine. Each morning I would rise and walk the mile into town along a narrow road. My journey took me past fragrant fuchsia hedges, green fields, a few scattered houses, and, at the base of a series of rock outcroppings leading up a hill, a large, stone-carved Celtic cross of unknown age but deemed of enough antiquity to merit its own historical marker, in Irish and in English. The sea, of course, was everywhere around me, a vast, looming presence that became my constant companion as I tramped along the road.

  Once in the village, I seated myself at a wooden table in the tiny shop that doubled—or tripled—as Ballynafarragy’s café, post office, and general store, drank a cup of tea, and ate a scone or two.

  “Dia Duit,” I said each morning to Mrs. Donnelly, the proprietor. Literally, God save you, a phrase equivalent to Good day.

  “Good morning,” she replied curtly, in English, each day for the first week of my stay. I persisted, and finally, whether through a softening of her heart or a decision that it was easier just to play along—my daily purchases probably didn’t hurt—she responded one day with “Dia is Muire duit,” or God and Mary be with you. Progress.

  Thus ensconced, I read the Irish Times for the next hour, dutifully starting with the pages printed in Irish, consulting an Irish-English dictionary I carried with me everywhere, and then moving on to the English-language news.

  One thing that struck me immediately was how little we knew back home of the violence in Northern Ireland. The execution of a suspected collaborator, the ambush of a British soldier, the death of a child from crossfire. Like the daily shootings in America today, The Troubles blurred together in a profusion of daily, deadly headlines. I blushed to think of the carefully curated tour I’d taken of Ireland after my junior year in high school, the way it avoided mention of the bloodletting in favor of Irish language tutorials and tales of mythological heroes like Cúchulainn. Once I lived in Ireland, even so far away from the North, the true extent of the conflict hit home.

  Finished at the café, and depending on the day, I would pay a visit to the local priest, a kindly, middle-aged man with perpetually red cheeks and a monk-like tonsure of thinning brown hair who always seemed to have time to chat with me, usually half in Irish and then in English, over a cup of tea.

  “Buachaill cróga is ea tú,” he said with a smile the first time we met, translating it roughly as, “You’re a brave lad.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You, coming here alone like this, not knowing a soul? Trying to gain the trust of the likes of us. It’s inspiring, is what it is.”

  “Buíochas”—thanks—I said, not sure how else to reply.

  Afterward, near lunchtime, I walked home and spent a few hours at the kitchen table in my cottage studying grammar, learning vocabulary, reviewing notes, reading, writing letters, and doing my best to stave off loneliness. Like Ballynafarragy’s priest, Father Seamus, you can marvel at the determination it took to transport a shy young man from the middle of Ohio to the heart of Gaelic-speaking Ireland. I marvel at it sometimes too. But despite how introverted I was, I was passionate about at least one thing: the desire to throw myself head-on into the task at hand. To become good at something, anything, even if it was learning a moribund language with far fewer than twenty thousand living speakers.

  Most early afternoons I napped, wrapping myself in my bed’s woolen blankets to stave off the chill of the sea air, even in summer. And then, rested up, I set out on the path that very nearly cost me my life.

  Ballynafarragy nestled above a small bay that was home to an equally small fishing fleet. From there the lone road out of town wound its way along a rocky peninsula jutting into the Atlantic. Halfway along, it crossed a bridge that carried the road over a splinter of an inlet carved by the sea millennia ago, a sight to behold with its jagged rocks at the bottom and cliff walls rising sheer on either side.

  From there, the road continued to the even smaller village on the other side, called simply Cuas, or “The Cove,” my destination most afternoons and evenings. Everyone there down to the handful of bright-eyed children spoke Irish from dawn till dusk. Some of the elders, people whispered to me, might even have trouble speaking English. A generation earlier, many of them lived on the island half a mile beyond, its craggy outline jutting from the ocean like the tip of a sunken mountain. Eventually, as the island’s population waned and the price of cod plummeted, the remaining villagers moved across the bay with the government’s help and resettled in Cuas. On any but the most gray and rainy days it was still possible to make out the stone walls and tic-tac-toe design of abandoned farm fields across the water, along with the cluster of thatch-roofed houses that constituted the old village. Oileán na Rón—Seal Island—loomed as a daily reminder of lost heritage, a stunningly beautiful landmark of what once was and never could be again.

  On my first forays to the village I trekked along the road on foot, skirting the edge of the peninsula, always pausing at the bridge to stare into the dark interior of the inlet. It was a walk of nearly an hour. Later, I bought a bike and cut the trip’s duration considerably, though the coast’s frequent and heavy rains meant biking wasn’t always an option. I didn’t mind the trip because of the view, which also kept the road thick with rental vehicles from May to September. Drivers could look out their window and see ocean waves crashing in an arcing cascade of green and white along the sharp rocks at the base of the peninsula. Beyond that rose Seal Island, shrouded in mist one moment, drenched in sunlight the next, waves exploding in an emerald dance along the base while above the water gulls and puffins and terns wheeled and rose and fell all day long.

  It was Moira who first told me about the shortcut. I met her one day as I emerged around the hedge lining an old farmer’s property whose house I had just visited. Startled, she took a step back and placed her hands on her hips.

  “So you’re the American,” she said.

  “Ah, yes.”

  “And you’re here to learn Irish?”

  “That’s right,” I stammered.

  “Why?”

  I didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t. I was transfixed by her, not in small part because she was the first woman anywhere close to my age who I’d spoken to that summer. And she was—well, what? Not conventionally beautiful, since even then, in what must have been her late twenties, the toll of a rural life lived frequently outdoors was taking its toll on her creamy, freckle dappled skin, with hints of crow’s feet already around her eyes and a weariness to her furrowed brow. But her green eyes shone, and her riot of curly black hair was a wonder, and she had a smile that was genuine and welcoming in a way I’d missed, trying to explain myself and my mission to her more guarded elders over the past few weeks. She asked me where I was going and I explained I was about to make the return trip home walking along the road.

  “There’s a faster way,” she said. “If you’re feeling brave.”

  I wasn’t,
particularly, despite Father Seamus’s teasing. But at the moment I would have followed her anywhere.

  For all intents and purposes, the shortcut—the path, or cosán—was invisible to outsiders. To reach it, we tramped behind a stone chapel that Moira explained was opened now only on special occasions. From there, we followed a cow lane along a wall of carefully layered stones. The ground steadily rose and I struggled to stay with her. She walked without hesitation, taking confident steps in her brown corduroy pants and heavy green Wellies. At the end of the wall she turned right, around a massive boulder, and then scampered up a small set of steplike rocks. Suddenly, I was staring at a well-trodden path that cut up and across the hill like the thrust of a broad sword.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s your way home,” she said with a laugh.

  We climbed higher and higher, pausing only once to raise the hoods on our oilskin raincoats as a late-afternoon shower passed over. At the top, a shoulder-high spur of black, lichen-covered granite bisected the trail. For the first time Moira slowed, then stopped. I paused, sneaking a glance at her face, which was set off in heart-stopping fashion by the ringlets of her hair, before directing my attention to Seal Island in the distance.

  “Stand back a bit,” she said, taking my right elbow and pulling me toward her.

  “Why?” I said, my heart pounding from her touch.

  “There,” she said, pointing.

  At first I didn’t see it. Following her instructions, I took a couple of steps forward. I swallowed hard. Just a few feet off the path loomed a precipice, below which the earth dropped away hundreds of feet. Through a quirk in the topography the drop-off wasn’t visible from the path and only appeared as you crested a low swell in the ground, at which point it would be too late to avoid the plunge if you weren’t looking. I inched closer. Far below, white spray from a wave crashed into rocks. I realized I was staring at the inlet carved into the peninsula, the same one I saw from the opposite vantage point on the bridge below. It was a long way down. A very long way.

  “It’s beautiful, but it’s deadly,” Moira said. “Any cow that gets loose is more or less doomed if they make it up this far.” She trained her green eyes on me. “It’s fine enough in the day, but don’t ever try it at night. Even I won’t do that. One slip . . .” she said, and pushed her hand out into the air with a frown.

  I nodded, not sure how to respond. We lingered a few minutes longer, staring at the island in the distance. She asked me about my project, and then posed a question in Irish. “An dtaithníonn na Rincí Gaelacha leat?”

  “Taithníonn! Taithníonn na Rincí Gaelacha liom,” I said, gratified by the surprise on her face. Yes, I do like Irish dancing.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said with a smile. “I was afraid from what I was hearing you were a hermit as well as a dreamer.”

  Over time she told me her story. Moira’s grandparents grew up on Seal Island. Once relocated, they settled in Cuas with no thoughts of moving elsewhere. Moira’s own mother, however, would have nothing to do with such a life and left as soon as she could. Moira was raised in the small city of Tralee, farther into the interior. In college she met her husband, Connor, a Dublin boy who’d never set foot in an Irish-speaking village but spoke passable Irish thanks to his grandfather. Fired by a combination of young love and national pride, Moira and Connor moved to Cuas, determined to participate in the country’s attempts to reclaim a heritage lost to English domination and global homogenization. They even harbored dreams of repopulating Seal Island with a new generation of Irish speakers. They bought a small farm and Connor hired onto a fishing crew. Moira gave birth to boy and girl twins whose first word, she recounted with pride, was daidí: “daddy.”

  And then Connor set off to sea one day and a storm blew up and by nightfall Moira was a widow.

  I’d like to report that meeting Moira was the beginning of a great romance. The pretty Irish lass and the quiet but adventurous American boy at play in a landscape of achingly harsh beauty. Our love deepening as I helped her heal from loss and she unleashed my inner confidence. But it wasn’t anything like that. I was a shy boy, as I’ve already explained. I’d kissed exactly one girl in college, and though nice enough, it turned out she was a lesbian trying to figure things out, and that was that. Moira had a spirited side but she was also practical. Even with her background, an Irish widow with two young children knew better than to take up with an American whose preoccupation in life was with dead or dying languages.

  What followed instead was a friendship that occasionally danced on the edge of something else. I continued my routine of visits and studies, slowly winning the trust of nearly every villager both in Ballynafarragy and Cuas. I still experienced stretches of loneliness and depression as I questioned my mission. But I also rapidly gained fluency in Irish, to the point that later that fall, a visiting scholar from Cork insisted I attend a symposium on Gaelic that coming spring as a featured speaker. Never one for the pubs, I overcame my insular nature enough to spend a night or two a week drinking Guinness and speaking Irish in Ballynafarragy’s lone bar. I achieved what I thought of as equilibrium after months of unrest.

  And then I found Sean Murphy’s corpse.

  For several weeks I followed Moira’s admonition about the path and walked it only during daylight hours. I came to appreciate both its utility—it cut the travel time from Cuas to Ballynafarragy by thirty minutes or more—as well as the vistas it provided of Seal Island to the west and the lonely, stony fields stretching behind it to the east. But as the days shortened and I spent more and more time in Cuas, either visiting Moira and her twins or huddled in the kitchens of elderly Irish speakers, the thought of the hour-long trek home along the road appealed less and less.

  One day after breakfast—it was now mid-November—I purchased a flashlight from Mrs. Donnelly. That night, I returned along the path in the dark for the first time. I halted when I reached the lichen-covered outcropping at the peak, where just a few short feet away the steep canyon walls of the inlet opened up like a jagged wound. Creeping past, I made it safely down and home and felt a thrill of pride in my accomplishment that nearly rivaled the self-esteem I’d gained from my language acquisition. From that point on, I traveled the path exclusively, including at night.

  The day before my gruesome discovery, I spent the bulk of the afternoon and early evening helping an elderly woman named Nell care for her chickens and tidy her gardens, now put to bed for the winter behind her stone cottage. Grateful for the company and the help, she served me boiled ham and potatoes and carrots and tea and we sat by her fireplace chatting in Irish as she poked bricks of peat with a poker until past nine o’clock.

  “Caithfidh mé bóthar a bhualadh,” I said at last. I need to get going. I thanked her for the meal, promised to return soon, and set off for the path and home. As was often the case, I glanced over at Moira’s cottage and to my surprise saw that a light was on; she was usually asleep early, often just minutes after putting the twins down. Perhaps emboldened by my success that day—Nell had taught me a long Irish ballad—I diverted my course and decided to stop by.

  “An bhfuil sé ródhéanach?” I said, reading the surprise in her eyes when she answered the door. Is it too late? To my wonder, she said that it wasn’t and I was more than welcome. Inside, I saw that she’d been looking at photographs, and as she made me a cup of tea she explained it was the anniversary of Connor’s death. We sat and talked for nearly an hour. Then, before I knew exactly what was happening, I leaned over and kissed her, and she didn’t resist and kissed me back, her lips wonderfully soft and warm. We kept it up for several minutes on her small couch, holding each other. And that was all. No fumbling in the dark as we stripped off our clothes, no groans of rapture as the sea crashed against the rocks outside. After a while we stopped and she said I should probably go. I stood up and put on my oil slicker and opened the door and stared out at pouring rain interrupted only by gusts of howling wind.

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sp; “Sure and you can’t go out in that,” Moira said softly, coming up beside me.

  She offered to let me drive her car home for the evening. I resisted, reluctant to strand her on such a night with her children, in case something happened. Instead, as a compromise, I slept on the couch, fully dressed, falling asleep with the thought of her just a few feet away, tucked into her own bed in the small room across the hall from the bedroom her twins shared.

  I startled awake hours later. Fumbling about, I saw by the dim glow of the kitchen clock that it was just past five in the morning. I sat up, rubbed my face, and glanced briefly in the direction of Moira’s room. I retrieved my notebook from my satchel, scribbled a note of thanks and explanation and left it on the kitchen table. I carefully opened her door, looking around for early risers who might object to the sight of me leaving the widow’s house that time of day, shut the door, and started up and along the path.

  Feeling tired and dejected, I was safely over the top and past the precipice and halfway down the opposite side when I heard a car engine. I stopped, listening, thinking it odd for a vehicle to be on the road so early. A minute later I heard men’s voices and a door opening and closing and then the sound of a car driving off. After a few moments I continued on.

  On the opposite side of the peninsula the path emptied out by the Celtic stone cross and its historical marker. I had passed it dozens of times at this point, often in the dark. This morning I saw right away it didn’t look right. Something was propped against the front of the cross. Not something, I saw, as I approached and raised the beam of my flashlight. My heart raced. Someone. A man was slumped against the cross. He was naked, and as I shone the light I gasped at the sight of the gaping hole between his eyes. I looked closer and saw something had been carved into his chest, a jagged mess of lines and curls, blood drying at the edges of deep wounds. It took me a moment, but I realized I was staring at a word.