The Celtic Riddle

by Lyn Hamilton

  My intentions were good, but my actions were thwarted.

  I may have wanted to give up on the treasure hunt and go back to my shopkeeping, but there was renewed enthusiasm for the quest in other quarters, as I learned the minute I got back to the Inn. Gilhooly had been good as his word, and had gone off to find the clue that went with salmon in a pool. Translated from ogham, it said simply Axis Mundi, presumably the center point around which the world turned. Very helpful, I’m sure, but Gilhooly and Jennifer were fired with enthusiasm for finding the rest of the clues, and had enlisted the support of Malachy and Kevin to do so. It was quite clear by this point that we didn’t need the rest of the family’s clues: we just had to find the clues that went with the lines of Amairgen’s song and decipher the ogham. By the end of that one day, while I was out antiquing, the intrepid foursome, who must have been a sight, the two old guys, the blond Canadian in her pink and purple Take No Prisoners jacket, and the local sailor, twice her age, had found not only Axis Mundi, but the clue that went with a flame of valor. The clues now looked like this.

  AMAIRGEN’S SONG

  I am the sea-swell

  The furious wave

  The roar of the sea

  A stag of seven slaughters

  A hawk above the cliff

  A ray of the sun

  The beauty of a plant

  A boar enraged

  A salmon in a pool

  A lake in a plain

  A flame of valor

  OGHAM CLUES

  May’s sunrise by Tailte’s Hill is seen

  A curse be on these stones.

  Leinster’s Hag to Eriu’s Seat

  Aine’s Mount to Macha’s Stronghold

  Raise a cup to the stone

  Almu’s white to Maeve’s rath

  Axis Mundi

  All seen and seeing eye of fire

  It was still all rather baffling, and the clues were not my only source of bewilderment. Strangely enough, Deirdre had come back and asked for her old position at Second Chance, only a few days after I’d seen her in Dublin. According to the gossip in the bar, Margaret Byrne had leapt at the opportunity to take her back, there being no one else in town who would stoop so low. Townspeople said Deirdre hadn’t liked Dublin, noisy and dirty as it was, and the pay was poor, even worse than the notorious Margaret was prepared to shell out, and some said Margaret couldn’t afford to pay Deirdre what she’d been paid before, a rumor I sincerely hoped wasn’t true. I did know that I had had the unfortunate experience of overhearing a shopkeeper tell Eithne that she could be extended no more credit until the outstanding bill was paid, an encounter that brought cheeks pink with embarrassment to both of us. I could understand that Deirdre might prefer the lovely Dingle to Dublin, but I was surprised, nonetheless. I’d thought Deirdre would never even consider returning to these parts, so terrified she had been by the murders of her colleagues.

  I’d have liked to ask her about it, but she wasn’t talking. At least she wasn’t talking to me, but she was in good company in that regard, joining a small but growing group of people who regarded me as the local version of Typhoid Mary. When I saw her the next day on the street in town, doing some shopping, like Breeta, Deirdre hurriedly crossed the street when she saw me coming toward her. I waved, but she gave me her frightened rabbit look and disappeared quickly into a laneway. By the time I got over to where I’d seen her disappear, she was gone, lost in the maze of tiny streets. I supposed it was my surprise appearance at McCafferty and McGlynn that had made her so afraid of me, but I would have thought that, weighed against the happenings at Second Chance, on balance, I would be seen to be the lesser of two evils. Apparently not.

  If Deirdre had nothing to say to me, however, she had plenty to tell the gardai.

  Chapter Eleven

  A FLAME OF VALOR

  WHAT Deirdre had to say to the gardai put Conail O’Connor in jail. Or rather, to be more precise, Conail’s reaction to what Deirdre had to say got him in trouble. Conail, hot-headed at the best of times, I’d warrant, was brought to the brink by his split with Fionuala and the constant ribbing he was subjected to, some of it friendly, some of it not, on the subject of his little encounter with Alex. His being hauled in for questioning had resulted in a physical altercation in the garda station that left one police officer with a bloody nose and Conail in handcuffs.

  Conail was being led off to a cell, as I went into the station to talk to Rob.

  “Piss off, will you?” he said as an officer took his arm. “I was looking for my wife,” he bellowed over his shoulder as he was taken away. “I know she was there. Flirting with every man she came across. Somebody will have seen me.”

  “Seen him where?” I asked Rob as he led me to his little corner of the station. They’d given him a desk in the middle of a busy room, opposite an engaging young officer who gallantly gave up his chair and went searching for another when Rob and I arrived.

  “Town,” Rob replied. “Deirdre has told us this morning that she saw Conail O’Connor at Second Chance late the night Michael Davis died. After pub closing time. He says he was looking for his wife, but in town, not at Second Chance.”

  “Well, we all saw him in town at one point, didn’t we, when he made that scene in the bar. But I talked to Deirdre before she went off to Dublin, and she didn’t say a word about it. Why is Deirdre saying this now? Why not before?”

  “Something about loyalty to the family, didn’t want to get any of them in trouble when she was sure Conail hadn’t really done anything wrong et cetera, et cetera. I can see why you refer to her as Deirdre of the Sorrows, by the way. Sad little lady. I see her kind of face from time to time, usually on the victims. They have an expression on their faces that seems to say that they know life will disappoint them, that something bad will happen to them. And the funny thing is, it does. I don’t know whether they’re victims because they look like victims, that they invite it in some way, or they look that way because of things that have happened to them already. Either way, I never quite know what to do or say to people like that.” He paused for a moment. “Anyway, that’s the reason I asked you to come down here, to try to confirm times again. I know we’ve been through this before, but in light of Deirdre’s statement, we’re going to have to go through it all again.”

  He looked tired. Well he might, of course, chasing criminals all day and doing the horizontal two-step with Ban Garda Maeve all night.

  “How are you, anyway?” he said, smiling at me. “It’s ages since we had a chance to talk.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m using my time here to find some stock for the store. Figure I might as well do something useful while I wait.”

  “Good,” he said. I knew what he was thinking. He wanted to believe me, but wasn’t sure whether he could or not. But he liked the idea of what I’d said. He thought it would keep me out of trouble. “Are you really?” he said suspiciously.

  “Absolutely,” I replied. I took a photo of the dining room set the seller had given me out of my bag and laid it out in front of him. “See? Lovely, isn’t it? I found a beautiful silver tea service, too.”

  “Great,” he said, handing the photo back to me. We seemed to be having trouble talking about anything other than police work, I realized. We used to talk all the time. This was not so good.

  “Well,” he said. “Down to business. Let’s go over that evening again. Michael and Breeta left together?”

  “Yes. She had to catch the last bus into Killarney. Michael was going to walk her to the bus stop, then he’d promised her he’d go back to Second Chance to get Vigs.”

  “The turtle,” Rob said.

  “Tortoise, actually, but yes.”

  “Method of transportation?”

  “He was walking her to the bus, but he had his bicycle, so he would have used that to get to the house. She would confirm this, I’m sure.”

  “She has, more or less. Sullen young woman, isn’t she? Has she said anything to you?”

&n
bsp; “Not a word,” I said. “Literally. She’s not speaking to me.”

  “She’s not saying much to anybody, I gather. Okay,” he sighed. “The last bus was at ten-thirty. Breeta was on it: the driver remembers her. He thinks Michael was at the stop, which makes sense. He would have waited with her until the bus came. Then he bicycles to Second Chance. That would take at least twenty minutes. Bren-dan here,” he said gesturing to the officer at the desk next to him, who smiled, “strapping young man that he is, did the route and timed it. Let’s say he got there about eleven. Now Conail was in and out of various pubs all evening, although he has difficulty accounting for his time beginning around ten or ten-thirty. He says he ran into Fionuala, and they had another argument, a loud one, I gather. Several people say they heard a man and a woman shouting at each other out in the street. That may account for a few minutes, but that’s all. What do you figure Michael did?”

  “I think he did what he said he would do. He went back to Second Chance to get Vigs. He could let himself in at the back door. The staff had keys to the staff entrance. It was late ...”

  “Not all that late, but the family, that is Sean, Eithne, and Margaret claim to have gone to bed very early, and didn’t hear a thing. Deirdre has a room up in the attic, so she probably wouldn’t have heard anything. She claims she didn’t. She does say, though, that she saw Conail creeping around outside the house. She looked out the window, apparently. It was raining a little, so it might have been difficult to see in the dark, but she says she recognized his walk and his shape. Conail is adamant that he went nowhere near the place.”

  “So Michael would have gone looking for Vigs. Deirdre had Vigs, though. She gave him to me when she went to Dublin. That may mean Michael didn’t find Vigs, that he never made it into the house, or that he did and took him outside. Did Deirdre say where she found Vigs?”

  “In the house, she says.”

  “So Michael could have run into Conail before he got into the house. And then what? Conail stabs him with a hypodermic?”

  “Conail doesn’t seem to have a drug problem, just an alcohol and temper problem,” Rob replied. “These Irish do seem to like their drink, don’t they? Almost a stereotype, some of them. But I don’t know. Conail insists he didn’t see Michael that evening at all. Too busy yelling at his wife to have seen Michael in the bar at the Inn, apparently. The question is, even if he did, why kill him? Just because he’d had a very bad day? It wasn’t Michael’s fault Conail’s wife ditched him, although I suppose she could have been flirting with him. She was flashing a fair amount of leg around that evening, chest too, if I remember correctly.”

  I smiled to myself. I’d thought he was so besotted with Maeve that he hadn’t noticed Fionuala, but apparently he had.

  “And it wasn’t Michael who flattened him out at Malachy and Kevin’s place: It was our very own Alex.” He grinned. “Sure wish I’d been there to see that. So what would he kill Michael for?”

  “For a clue?” I said. “Michael had a clue in his hand, part of one at least.”

  “We’ve looked into the clues, of course, talked to those lawyers, McCafferty and McGlynn, one of them anyway. I can’t seem to tell them apart,” he said, checking his notes. “McCafferty it was. He says they had nothing to do with hiding the second set of clues and didn’t know who did. Nor did they know which line of the poem went in each of the envelopes. I suppose we have to believe him, being a fellow member of the justice system and all that.”

  “Did you find out what clues everyone had? That would be important, wouldn’t it?”

  “Of course I did,” Rob said. “I’m a seasoned crime investigator, remember? Conail and Fionuala got one about,” he stopped and looked at his file again, “a ray of the sun. Conail showed it to me, or rather he threw it at me. Margaret claims to have destroyed hers, without looking at it, so it could be anything; Eithne and Sean got the clue about the stag of seven slaughters; Padraig Gilhooly got ...”

  “Salmon in a pool,” I interjected. “Michael got the furious wave, Alex, the sea-swell. The trouble is there are more clues than people, or original envelopes if you will. The beauty of the plant might have been Breeta’s clue, the one stolen from the safe at Second Chance. Michael must have found it—maybe he wrestled Conail for it. Michael was awfully fond of Breeta, and he’d not want anyone else to get her clue.”

  “Wrestled Conail or somebody else,” he replied. “Could be. Or maybe he just found it in the house somewhere. A lot of speculation isn’t there? We’ll keep seeing what we can get from Conail. Ban Garda Minogue is interrogating him now.” I noticed he always referred to her as Minogue in my presence and never Maeve. “We haven’t got enough evidence to hold him for the murder—at this point it’s her word against his—but fortunately perhaps, he’s given us another reason to keep him here. Garda Murphy might not agree it’s fortuitous, of course. His nose is being looked at right now. Broken, most likely, and swelling up something fierce. By the way,” he said, “can you decipher this?” He handed me a sheet of paper, one that I’d come to recognize, with Eamon Byrne’s initials and Second Chance at the top.

  “Conail’s clue?”

  “Yup. He gave it to us. Said it was a worthless piece of junk. Jennifer told me you’d all been able to decipher any that turned up, ogham or something I think she said.”

  “It is. Alex is really the expert. He broke the code, so to speak. I recognize some of the letters now, but I’d have to have my cheat sheet. It’s in a safety-deposit box at the Inn. Make me a copy, and I’ll go right back there, do it and call you back.”

  “Thanks,” he smiled. “That will save us some time. I already have a copy, so here it is. I’d like the rest of the clues, too, if you don’t mind, although I gather they don’t say much. Don’t say anything about Deirdre’s accusations, will you? We don’t want to reveal our source to the family, most especially to Conail himself. We’ve just told him that an unspecified someone passing by saw him hanging around there. How’s Jennifer doing, by the way? She’s all right, isn’t she? I haven’t seen her much lately, but she seems happy.”

  The question I’d been dreading. I looked about me. There was one garda, Rob’s deskmate, working just a few feet away, two others well within earshot. Somehow, I didn’t think this was the time to tell him his daughter thought she was in love with an Irish sailor twice her age. “She’s okay,” I said. “But I think she misses you and your fatherly guidance.” There, that was a big hint. “You should try and spend some time with her, just the two of you, so you can talk.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I should, and I will. I’m sure she’s getting plenty of guidance from you, though. Just like you’re guiding me, right now.” He smiled. “Thanks for the advice.”

  I got up to leave. If he thought I was giving his daughter guidance, he wasn’t going to be too pleased with the result.

  “Since I’m dispensing advice right now, I have some more for you. Get some sleep,” I said as I headed out the door. I heard him chuckle, but didn’t look around.

  Conail and Fionuala’s clue, the ray of the sun, was Grianan Ailech to Granard down the line to the Celtic Sea. No more helpful than any of the rest. I wrote them all down on a piece of paper and dropped them off at the garda station for Rob on the way to my next buying expedition. I’d heard there was an auction at a town on the other side of the Dingle Peninsula called Bally-ferriter. I stopped off for a bite of lunch at a little wine bar on the main street of town and found, to my surprise, Jennifer and Gilhooly, Malachy and Kevin. I smiled at her and the two brothers, and glared at Gilhooly.

  “How’d you get all the way over here?” I asked them.

  “Paddy borrowed a van,” Jennifer said, gesturing toward the window. A dilapidated van sat outside.

  “We’ve found another clue,” Jennifer said. “I made a copy of Uncle Alex’s ogham table and brought it along.”

  “It’s a mystery,” Malachy said. Jennifer handed me the paper.

  “All see
n and seeing ring of fire,” I read. “Which line of the poem did this one come from?”

  “A flame of valor,” Malachy replied. “And we’ve found another one, the one that goes with he who clears the mountain paths. Kev here had the idea that would refer to Mt. Brandon, named after St. Brandon, so we hiked all the way up the path to a cairn, and found it there.”

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “Not entirely,” Malachy said. “Tere’s a small problem with it, you see. ’Twas hidden the same way as the others, and it has Byrne’s initials on it and everything.”

  “But?”

  “But it’s blank! Here, take a look.”

  I looked. The now familiar paper was there, but it was, as Malachy said, quite blank.

  “What does this mean?” Jennifer asked no one in particular. “The paper doesn’t look as if it’s ever been wet, or anything. Like the ink might have washed away.”

  “How should I know?” I replied. “Unless ...” They all looked at me.

  “There have been more of the second set of clues than the first. I mean, we’ve found ogham clues for lines of the poem no one was given. Presumably, we were supposed, with the clues we got, to figure out it was from ‘Song of Amairgen,’ and go and find all the lines of the poem, not just the ones we had.” I stopped there, and they all waited. “So,” I hesitated. “So I don’t know.”