by Erin Hart
“Are you the only person with a prior connection to Kavanagh?”
“I met him once, years ago, as I said. I’d hardly call that a connection.”
“To your knowledge, had any of the others here ever met Mr. Kavanagh?”
“Well, my wife would have met him at the same time I did, but I doubt she would remember. It’s twenty years ago.”
“And where was this?”
“At an academic conference in Toronto—a meeting of the Eriugena Society. A little-known group, medievalists and philosophers and paleographers. I believe Kavanagh was presenting a paper—I’m afraid I don’t remember the subject.”
“What was the name of the group?”
“The Eriugena Society.”
“Could you spell that for me?” She handed him her notebook.
“Medievalists, philosophers, and—sorry—what was the last group you mentioned?”
“Paleographers. Specialists in the study of ancient handwriting.”
“And what were you doing at the conference?”
“A colleague and I had just finished work on a late-ninth-century text, and the conference organizers thought it might be useful to have me give a talk about the process. I warned them that I wasn’t much at public speaking. How is all this relevant? I’ve really no idea what Kavanagh was doing here.”
“It’s possible that his visit to the area had something to do with his wife. I believe she’s stayed here a few times.”
Gwynne looked confused.
“Her name isn’t Kavanagh—it’s Broome. Mairéad Broome.”
A light dawned in his eyes. “Yes, of course, Mairéad. She’s often stayed with us.”
“And you’d no idea she was married to Benedict Kavanagh?”
“She never mentioned it. I suppose I thought—” He broke off suddenly, as if aware that he ought to be a bit more circumspect.
“What?” Stella asked. “That she was attached to her assistant, perhaps? Maybe I ought to mention that she’s here at Killowen now. She came down to identify her husband’s body. I believe she and Graham Healy will be staying on here for a few days.”
Gwynne looked slightly distracted. “Yes, better to be away from Dublin. The newspapers and the television can be merciless.”
Spoken like someone with firsthand experience, Stella thought. He looked up, and she understood that he would say no more today. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Gwynne. I wonder if you could point me to”—she consulted the handwritten list Claire Finnerty had made for her—“Lucien Picard.”
He stepped to the door and directed her across the far corner of the yard to a single-story whitewashed shed. “Ah, the French contingent. He’ll be in the cheese storehouse, and Sylvie with him. Never apart, those two.”
The rank scent of mold greeted Stella’s nostrils when she stepped through the door of the storehouse. “Lucien Picard?” A wiry, energetic-looking man in his midthirties looked up from his work as she entered. He was slicing through a thick wheel of cheese with an implement that looked like a knife with handles on both ends.
“C’est moi,” he said. “Sorry—that’s me. Try some of this? Six months aged.” He cut a thin wedge and popped it into her mouth before she could protest. “Very good, eh? To me, it is the best ever!”
Stella tasted the cheese on her tongue; it was perfectly tart and crumbly. She struggled to swallow. “Yes, very good, but I’m not here to… I have to ask you about Benedict Kavanagh.” She held up her identification. “The dead man found in the bog?”
His look of triumph vanished, replaced by seriousness. “Ah, yes, we heard about this. Do you need Sylvie as well? Sylvie!” A slightly younger woman emerged from the next room. Her short platinum hair was swathed in a turban-like pink headband, and beneath it strong features—large hazel eyes, a long, refined-looking nose, and generous lips—made a striking impression. Sylvie wore a blue peasant blouse and jeans, topped with a starched white chef’s apron. Resting on her shoulder was a four-foot plank that held two dozen or more petite creamy white cheeses.
“We have the police here, Sylvie, about the man in the bog—”
“Benedict Kavanagh,” Stella added.
“Yes, what about him? Is it true what they’re saying, that he was murdered?” Sylvie set her plank down on the counter and began loading her cheeses into a box. She avoided eye contact, concentrating instead on her task, her hands moving quickly, efficiently. Sylvie was careful to grasp each round of the soft cheese very gently so as not to damage it.
“Did either of you happen to know Kavanagh?” Stella asked. “Here’s a photograph, in case you might recognize him.”
Her cargo safely stowed at last, Sylvie looked up at the picture. “No. I’ve never seen this man. I’m sorry.”
“We think he disappeared sometime in late April, so I’m asking everyone at Killowen what they recall from that time. Anything out of the ordinary.”
Lucien and Sylvie regarded each other briefly, and Stella got the impression that they had already conferred about what they were going to say. Difficult to tell if she was reading the signals right; it was always slightly disconcerting when interview subjects spoke a language with its own nonverbal nuances.
“Out of the ordinary?” Picard made a wry face. “Difficult to say, because you see, there is no ‘ordinary’ here. Every day is different. That last part of April, we were making the chèvre, Sylvie, do you remember? The soft goat cheese, also crottin and pyramide.” He held up his hands to describe the shapes.
“We also had many, eh… Lucien, qu’est-ce que ‘chevrette’ en Anglais?”
“ ‘She-goat,’ je crois.”
“Many of our she-goats, they were having kids at the time. So much to do.”
“We didn’t sleep a lot,” Lucien added.
“Did you have any guests or artists in residence at that time?”
Lucien squinted, trying to recall. “A few, I suppose. I can’t remember. Claire would have their names, if you need them.”
“Do you happen to know the name Mairéad Broome?”
“Yes, the painter. She has been here a few times.”
“And was she one of the artists who were staying here at the end of April?”
“You know, she might have been. As I said, Claire would know for certain.”
“And you know that she was married to Benedict Kavanagh?”
“I didn’t know. Sylvie, did you know this?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Once again, Stella got the distinct impression that a certain amount of forethought had gone into the answers these two were providing. Why should anyone lie about knowing the identity of Mairéad Broome’s husband? The reactions of the people here to Benedict Kavanagh’s death were strange. Each knew less than the one before, as if they were in some sort of competition for who could display the blankest expression, who could know the least about the dead man. She still had three more people to interview: Tessa Gwynne, Shawn Kearney, and Anthony Beglan.
“Thank you. If you do think of anything else, please give me a ring?” She handed each of them a card, wishing she could double back and listen to the conversation that would be in progress a few minutes after she’d left. Of course it would help if she had a bloody word of French.
As she crossed the haggard, there was a clatter of stones that sounded like a wrecking ball had gone through the side of the house. Stella rounded the corner of the barn to find Diarmuid Lynch’s heavy loader driven by a lanky middle-aged man in a brown peaked cap. Beside the pile of stones the driver had just deposited on a patch of meadow stood a woman with short dark hair and vivid blue eyes. Stella glanced at her list. “Shawn Kearney?” she asked.
The woman raised her hand in reply, then removed her dusty leather gloves as her colleague parked the loader and shut off the engine. “Yes, I’m Shawn.”
The accent was American, Stella noted, as she held up her ID. “Detective Cusack. I’m here about the body found in the bog yesterday. You’
re the nearest neighbors, so I’m talking to everyone at Killowen. Does the name Benedict Kavanagh mean anything to either of you?”
Shawn Kearney shrugged. “No, I don’t remember hearing that name. Do you, Anthony?”
“Cuh-cuh-can’t suh-say that I do,” he said. His right arm shot out forcefully, as if he was going to land a punch, but he struck at the air. Stella drew back involuntarily.
“It’s all right, Detective,” Kearney said. “It’s just a reflex.” As if to demonstrate, Beglan’s hand shot out twice more, uselessly punching the air before him, and he let out a series of high-pitched squeaks. Shawn Kearney stood by as if this conversation were the most normal thing in the world. Stella had to concentrate on her questions and tried to keep eye contact with both of them. “We’re looking at the last two weeks of April, asking everyone if they remember anything unusual from that time.”
“I was the on-site archaeologist as the new geothermal system was going in,” Kearney said.
“So you’d only just arrived?”
“That’s right. Never set foot on the place before the middle of last April. And now I can’t leave.” She raised her arms, as if astonished to find herself standing in a meadow next to a heap of stones. “Life is full of surprises.”
“You had no previous connection to Killowen before coming to work on the project?”
“No. I was at one of the big contract archaeology firms in Dublin.”
“You’re American,” Stella noted.
“Yes, I got my Irish citizenship after grad school—my gran was from Sligo. Ireland was a great place to find archaeology work—until the economy went to hell. I was lucky to be working when the job here came up, and when it finished, they let me go. With so much development on hold, there aren’t as many jobs. But I made out all right. I love it here.”
“What sorts of artifacts turn up in an excavation at a place like this?” Stella asked.
“There’s not much left aboveground in these early Christian settlements. We did find a stylus, a medieval writing tool. That’s how we met Niall Dawson—he came down to collect it.”
“When was Mr. Dawson here?”
“I put in the call to the National Museum right away, as soon as the stylus turned up. He was here the next day, the twenty-second of April. I showed him around a bit, but nothing else turned up, so he went back to Dublin.”
“What about you, Mr. Beglan?” Stella asked. “What do you recall from April?”
He opened his mouth to speak but instead began to yip like a small dog—once, twice, three times—and then said, “Nothing… strange.” His chin jutted forward and his jaws snapped shut, as if he were trying to recapture the words he’d just spoken into the air.
“Is the name Mairéad Broome familiar to either of you?”
“No, not really,” Kearney said. “But I’m fairly new here.”
“Picka-picka-painter,” Anthony Beglan sputtered. “Often cuh-cuh-comes here.”
“That’s right,” Stella said. “Benedict Kavanagh was her husband.”
Shawn Kearney’s eyes widened. “You think there’s some connection? That’s horrible.”
Stella eyed the loader Beglan had been driving. “Do you use a lot of heavy equipment around here?”
“Just that loader for stones, and the tractor,” Shawn Kearney replied. “Nothing heavier than that.”
“Never have need of a JCB?”
“No. Claire would usually hire out those sorts of jobs. Like when they brought in the digger for the new heating system.”
“Let me ask you, did anyone at Killowen have access to those diggers after hours, when the workmen had knocked off for the night?”
“Not that I recall,” Kearney said. “Besides, you’d have to know how to drive one—”
“I’ve operated a juh-juh-JCB,” Anthony Beglan said. “Not them ones, though. Huh-had their own, that crowd.”
“Where exactly were the new heating coils installed?”
“Just down this hill, Detective. Do you see that post in the ground, with the red flag attached? That’s where the coils went in.”
Stella turned back to the main house, trying to imagine the decibel level of a JCB and the distance from the house. “Did you ever see or hear anyone else using the machinery?”
“No,” said Shawn Kearney. Beglan shook his head.
“Well, thanks for your time.” She turned to leave, then pivoted on her heel. “I meant to ask, what are you doing with that load of stones?”
“Building a labyrinth,” Shawn Kearney replied. “A meditation path.”
The last person on Stella’s list, Tessa Gwynne, wasn’t difficult to track down. She was in the cottage that she shared with her husband, at the end of a path that wound through Killowen’s oak wood. The cottage was either authentically old or built to look that way, with small windows, rough whitewashed walls, and a rosebush, a vigorous climber that arched over the doorway.
All at once, a most exquisite ringing swelled from inside the house. Stella peered in through the open window and saw Tessa Gwynne on a low stool behind the door, playing a harp that looked as if it were strung with gold. Was that even possible, or was it just a trick of the light? Tessa Gwynne’s eyes were closed, and her whole body moved to the music, the harp in her intimate embrace. Stella stood, rooted, feeling her chest tighten as the melody grew in urgency. As the music grew from a thrum of low notes to a thrilling race up the scale, she leaned into the wall, overtaken by a wild grief that welled up from nowhere and kept spilling until there was no more, until the miraculous notes finally settled into plaintive dignity, the feeling receding and fading with the notes like lapping waves.
Stella felt exhausted. She tried to collect herself, remembering what she’d come for. She rapped on the door and found herself looking into a pair of dark, heavy-lidded eyes that regarded her over a pair of half-moon reading glasses. The woman’s collarbone stood out like a yoke beneath her flesh. “Mrs. Gwynne? Detective Stella Cusack. I’m investigating the murder of the man whose body was found in the bog yesterday.”
Tessa Gwynne seemed to shrink slightly. “Ah, yes, a terrible business.” She didn’t step away, and Stella had to drag her gaze from the hand that gripped the door—thick nails, uncannily powerful fingers. Strange how playing heaven’s instrument could give one a hellish harpy’s claws. “You’ve found out who he is, then? We hadn’t heard.”
“Benedict Kavanagh.” Mrs. Gwynne’s long white hair was done up in a coil at the back of her head, and the claw fluttered at the wisps of hair at the base of her neck. “So the name is familiar to you?”
“Yes, my husband and I met him once. It’s many years ago now. Although there is a more recent connection. His wife is a painter—she sometimes stays with us.”
“So you knew that Mairéad Broome was married to Benedict Kavanagh? How is it your husband wasn’t aware of that fact?”
Tessa Gwynne gave a tiny, exasperated smile. “Because my husband is—like most men—off in his own world, never quite paying attention to all that’s going on around him.” Her voice was mild, the accent English and decidedly upper-crust, but she looked slightly frazzled, and a touch too thin. The word “careworn” popped into Stella’s head—probably the word her mother would have used.
“So only you and Claire Finnerty knew that Mr. Kavanagh was related to one of your guests?”
“I can’t think how anyone else would have known, except from talking to Mairéad. Benedict Kavanagh was something of a celebrity because of his television program, but it’s unlikely that anyone else would have known who he was.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because we haven’t got a television at Killowen. Never have. This is a meant to be a place for contemplation, a retreat.”
“Then how did you happen to know about Mr. Kavanagh’s program, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Mairéad is my friend. She shared a few things with me about Benedict and his work.”
“Did you
ever discuss the state of her marriage?”
Tessa Gwynne turned an even gaze upon her. “Are you married yourself, Detective?” Stella felt her face flush. “And do you speak to many people about the state of your marriage? I wonder. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. Only I wonder how much we can ever really know about other people’s lives.”
“But perhaps you were able to form some impression?”
“My impression was that Mairéad loved her husband.”
Stella paused for a moment. “She told me that she and Graham Healy were lovers and have been ever since he came to work for her.”
Tessa Gwynne’s spine straightened, and her voice betrayed a glint of ice. “Well, since Mairéad has been so forthcoming, I’m afraid my impressions can be of no use to you.”
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Gwynne,” Stella said. “I won’t trouble you any further today.” She took her leave and returned to the path up to the main house, thinking about Tessa Gwynne’s spellbinding music—and about what sort of friend tries to protect someone who doesn’t want her protection.
13
It was a few minutes past five when Nora spotted Stella Cusack coming up the path from the oak wood at Killowen. She hurried out to the drive, glancing around and feeling just a tiny bit paranoid about being seen talking to the police.
Cusack stood beside her car. “Dr. Gavin.”
“Detective, do you remember those marble-like things we found in Benedict Kavanagh’s throat?” Nora handed over the two galls she’d collected this afternoon. “I did a bit of research, thought you might like to know what I found. They’re oak galls, gallnuts. And they have another name as well. In folk medicine and magic they’re called serpent’s eggs.”