by Erin Hart
“Apologies for the interruption,” Cusack said. “But I have a few more questions, particularly for you,” she continued, turning to Mairéad Broome. “When did you find out that your husband was the father of Deirdre Claffey’s child?”
Claire Finnerty reached out to her friend. “It’s all right, Mairéad.”
Mairéad Broome’s voice was quiet but strong. “Vincent Claffey informed me of that fact just after my husband went missing. It seems they’d had a… financial arrangement, but Mr. Claffey never had a chance to collect.”
“And that’s why Mr. Healy was paying him off when you arrived here?”
Mairéad Broome nodded. “I agreed to honor the arrangement he’d made with my husband, but I wanted to add one condition. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, I don’t expect you to believe me, Detective.”
Graham Healy spoke. “What Mairéad wanted was to raise the child and to look after Deirdre as well, give her a better start in life. But Claffey was holding out for more money. He knew Mairéad would give anything to help the girl and her child.”
“It was the only way I could think to protect her, to get her away from that man. Deirdre will have to make her own decisions now, but Cal will eventually inherit the bulk of my husband’s estate, according to the terms of the family trust.”
“You all knew this,” Cusack said, issuing a challenge to the assembled Killowen residents.
“Mairéad has suffered enough,” Claire Finnerty said. “But you can’t accuse her of murder. For God’s sake, she loved Benedict. She’s still protecting him. Can you not see that?”
Mairéad Broome spoke quietly. “Please, Claire, that’s enough. We’ve been through it all, Detective. Graham and I were on the other side of the Slieve Bloom Mountains when my husband disappeared. I know we can’t prove that to your satisfaction, but it’s the truth.”
“And if I choose to believe you, then that means my investigation will have to focus elsewhere,” Cusack said. She looked in turn at each of the people around her. “Do you know what I’m beginning to think? That one of you deliberately brought Benedict Kavanagh here, knowing that it was the perfect opportunity to get rid of him, not only for your friend’s sake, but for your own. Or perhaps for all your sakes.”
The detective took a few more steps, walking behind Shawn Kearney, as she thought aloud. “I have my former colleague, Detective Molloy, to thank for some of what I’m about to tell you,” Cusack said. “Before the worm turned, he’d actually done some police work. You must have wondered where Vincent Claffey got all the material he used for blackmail. Molloy was supplying it. He used his position to dig into your backgrounds, your histories, and discovered that you were all running from something. He’d found out, for instance, that at least one of you is using an alias.” She stopped behind Claire Finnerty, who shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Cusack moved to the next person at the table, Diarmuid Lynch. “I even considered that Benedict Kavanagh’s death might have been carried out by more than one person. You all had reason to hate him—”
Lynch turned to face her. “Say whatever you’ve come to say, Detective.”
“All right.” Cusack continued on her circuit around the table. “We’ve had plenty of distractions, if you want to call them that. Book shrines and treasure hunters, ancient manuscripts, Vincent Claffey and his blackmail schemes. But it struck me just today that this whole case goes back to what sort of a man Benedict Kavanagh was. Intelligent, yes, but also arrogant, aggressive, blind to his faults, and more than willing to use other people in pursuit of his own aims.” Cusack stopped, fixing Martin Gwynne with a steady gaze. “But perhaps most telling was the evidence we found suggesting that Benedict Kavanagh was a serial seducer of young girls. Why did you insist on telling everyone that your daughter was dead, Mr. Gwynne? I can understand if the shame of attempted suicide was too much to bear—”
“No!” A jagged cry erupted from Tessa Gwynne. All eyes were on her as she leapt up from the table and tried to put herself between Stella Cusack and her husband. “No, it was never shame. I won’t have you saying that. And don’t look at him, don’t—Martin…”
Gwynne’s look pleaded with his wife. “Ah, Tess, you don’t know what you’re doing—”
“I know, my love. I do know.” She turned back to Cusack. “I think you have a daughter, Detective. You cannot know what you would do if someone… if someone brought such grievous harm to your child.”
Cusack said nothing.
Tessa Gwynne continued: “Our Derryth was such an open spirit, so gentle, so full of joy—”
“Until she met Benedict Kavanagh.”
“Until he destroyed her. She met him at that conference in Toronto where Martin spoke all those years ago. I’ve thought about it so much since then, all those philosophers wasting their breath arguing against the existence of evil when he was right there in their midst, that serpent, that villain—” She stumbled, but Cusack reached out to keep her upright. “Martin and I, we didn’t know what had happened. When we returned to England, she tried to stay in touch with him, this man to whom she’d given everything—everything—and he—” Her legs buckled and she fell against Cusack for support. “He tossed her aside, like so much rubbish. My beautiful, beautiful child. Only fifteen years old. And so she tried to kill herself, by swallowing these, a half dozen or more.” Tessa Gwynne brought a fistful of gallnuts from her pocket, her hand shaking. “She believed they were poisonous, you see, just kept shoving them down her throat until she couldn’t breathe anymore. It was too late when we found her, too late to reverse the damage. You see, don’t you, why I did what I had to do? I brought Benedict Kavanagh here. I didn’t know anything about Deirdre, or the baby. Mairéad, I swear, I meant to stop him sooner.”
“How did you manage to get Kavanagh down here to Killowen?” Cusack asked.
“It wasn’t difficult. I knew he wanted the book, you see, the fabled Book of Killowen. I knew he’d have done anything to get it. I heard Martin and Anthony talking about it and knew that Kavanagh wouldn’t be able to resist. So I rang and told him that what he was after was here, that it could be his for the right price. I told him to come and see the carving at the chapel, if he didn’t believe me.”
“The figure with the wax tablet,” Niall Dawson said. “The Greek letters. And the initials below, IOH—for Iohannes Scottus Eriugena.”
“And that was the first time Kavanagh came here, eighteen months ago?” Cusack asked.
“Yes. I’d whetted his appetite for the spoils but missed my chance to get him alone. He came, and saw the chapel, and then he escaped. I had to wait more than a year for another opportunity. I couldn’t fail this time. I rang again, asked him to meet me out on the bog, at night. I was to bring the book this time. He didn’t know me—who I was, what I was doing here. I showed him Martin’s copy of the old manuscript, and when he leaned into the boot for his case of money”—her muscles began to spasm, limbs jerking awkwardly—“I hit him,” she said, reliving the horror of it. “As hard as I could, and he crumpled, just like a marionette. I tied his hands and feet, and stopped his breath—one bitter serpent’s egg for every one my child had swallowed. After he was dead, I gave him a proper serpent’s tongue as well.” She fell to her knees, arms and shoulders writhing, her face a grimace.
Martin Gwynne dropped to his knees beside her. “Tessa, no!”
“What’s wrong with her?” Shawn Kearney asked. “Why is she shaking like that?”
Nora darted forward and seized Tessa’s wrist. “Mrs. Gwynne, have you taken something? You must tell us.”
Tessa Gwynne pushed her away. “Leave me alone. Let me talk.” She turned to Cusack again. “You wanted to know about the car, how I managed to bury it. My father was in construction. He taught me himself how to handle a JCB. Always said I was the neatest excavator he’d ever had.”
“And you came across the bog man when you were digging the cutout for Kavanagh’s car,” Cusack said.
Tessa Gw
ynne nodded, her lips curling back once more in a ghastly grin. “I had no choice, had to put him in the boot. No one would have found them, but for Vincent Claffey grubbing after money in moor peat.” Her breaths were coming shallower. “I’m not sorry he’s dead. As bad as the other, the way he used Anca, his own daughter.” Tessa Gwynne cried out as her body convulsed, her back arching uncontrollably.
Nora took her wrist again, this time checking for a pulse. “Mr. Gwynne, has your wife taken something?”
“I don’t know,” Gwynne replied helplessly.
Nora looked around at the circle of anxious faces. “Did she swallow anything in the last few minutes? Did anyone see?”
Martin Gwynne wept as he tried to still his wife’s body, now wracked with spasms. “I didn’t think… she takes so many tablets. My wife hasn’t been herself these last few months, she’s been ill. Oh, Tessa, my lovely Tess.”
His wife looked up at him, between spasms now, and raised a hand to his face. “I had hoped… all this would pass, and you would never know… but how could I let you or anyone else take the blame? You see that, don’t you, my love? Don’t forget—” Tessa Gwynne’s back arched once more, until it seemed as if her spine would snap. Her husband clasped her to his chest, but her eyes were staring, vacant now. Stella Cusack turned away, her head bowed.
BOOK SIX
Uch a lám,
ar scribis de memrum bán!
Béra in memrum fá buaidh,
is bethair-si id benn lom cuail cnám.
Alas, O hand,
so much white parchment you have written!
You will make the parchment famous,
and you will be the bare peak of a heap of bones.
—Epigram left by an Irish scribe in the margin of a medieval manuscript
1
Nora pushed through the wide door at the morgue just as Catherine Friel pulled the sheet over Tessa Gwynne’s body on the mortuary table, shaking her head in resignation.
“The poison was mercifully quick. I think we’ll find it’s strychnine, when the toxicology reports come through. She hadn’t much time, in any case. There were some fairly advanced histopathologic changes in her brain and muscle tissue, consistent with multiple myeloma. I’m sure the disease was beginning to affect her quite significantly by this stage. I’m amazed that she had the strength…”
A moment of silence hung between them. Nora thought of the desperate act of a grieving mother, unable to countenance the continued existence of the man she held responsible for her child’s living death.
“I would never condone what she did,” Dr. Friel said. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t imagine what she felt. If it had been my child—”
The door opened, and one of the local mortuary staff stuck his head in. “There’s someone here to collect one of your patients, Dr. Friel—Anca Popescu.” Nora could see Claire Finnerty and Diarmuid Lynch standing just outside the mortuary.
“You can tell them to come through,” Dr. Friel said.
“So you’re taking Anca back to Killowen?” Nora asked Claire. “Does she not have family in Romania?”
“None that wanted her,” Claire replied. “So we’re going to keep her here, with us.” She looked away, trying to keep her composure.
Diarmuid Lynch asked, “May we see her?”
“Of course.” Anca Popescu’s body was draped, but her face—pale bluish in hue, bruised and scraped—silenced them all for a moment.
Claire reached out and touched Anca’s hair. “She was so often sad. And who could blame her, with the life she had? But if you could see the work she’d done for Martin. There was a quality to it, almost like there was something so immense within her that it couldn’t be contained. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Nora asked, “Are you planning any sort of observance?”
“Yes,” Claire said. “We’ll wash the body and wake her tonight.”
“If you need help,” Nora said, “I have some experience. I know what to do. Why don’t I come back with you now?”
Following Diarmuid and Claire in the van, with the simple wooden box visible through the back window, Nora felt herself part of an odd funeral cortège, a small procession that wound its way through the hills that had been crossed in turn by chieftains and cattle herders, monks and raiders, croppies and yeomen, all characters in the great book of human events.
2
Cormac was in the Killowen car park, loading his site kit into Niall Dawson’s vehicle, when he heard a voice behind him: “I need to show you something.”
Cormac turned to see a figure on the bench outside the door. Martin Gwynne seemed to have aged forty years in the space of a day. He stared out toward the oak wood as Niall Dawson joined them. Gwynne said, “Anthony’s back from hospital. And he has something that he’d like you both to see.” He turned to Cormac. “Perhaps you’d bring your father along, too.”
When they arrived at Beglan’s farm, Anthony stepped outside. “You’re all right with this, are you?” Martin Gwynne asked. “I want to make sure, Anthony, because it’s bound to change things. I just need to know that you’re prepared.”
“I uh-uh-AM prepared!” Beglan said, his chin thrusting forward.
The kitchen looked exactly as it had been left by the crime scene investigators yesterday, with remnants of Beglan’s everyday life everywhere: bread crumbs and tea mugs and a buttery knife beside the sink. A basin of water stood on the table, along with a bowl of oak galls and a small Bridget’s cross that Cormac had not noticed before.
Dawson zeroed in on the objects on the table as well and turned to Anthony. “Were you making ink here?”
“No, it’s the cuh-cure,” Beglan said.
“A cure for what?” Dawson asked.
Beglan grimaced and pointed to Cormac’s father, seated at the kitchen table. “Eeh-he can’t talk right. I have a cuh-cuh-cure for it.” He smiled. “I know, cuh-cure myself first, right? But it hum-huh-doesn’t work that way. Un-fuh-fortunately.”
“What way does it work?” Cormac was genuinely curious.
“Be patient. You’ll see the connection very soon,” Gwynne said.
Beglan fetched a bundle from the next room and set it down on the kitchen table. He began peeling back the canvas until he had revealed what was inside. On the table lay an ancient manuscript, its worn leather wrapper closed with three buttons. Cormac could see a knot-work design faintly scratched in the surface of the cover. He glanced at Niall Dawson, who appeared dumbstruck.
“My God,” Dawson finally managed. “Is this… ?”
“A legacy,” Gwynne replied. “An unimaginable treasure, a responsibility laid upon the Ó Beigléighinns, descendants of the little scholar, more than a thousand years ago.”
“And was the book shrine connected to this manuscript?”
“Yes, but the police have that. The Cumdach Eóghain and its contents had been separated for centuries—Anthony’s grandfather only succeeded in reuniting them in 1947. It’s strange. There’s been so much squabbling over the shrine, with its gold and precious stones, when the real treasure was what lay inside it all those years. Gentlemen, I give you the Book of Killowen.”
Cormac felt a surge of adrenaline. He couldn’t imagine what Niall must be feeling.
“I thought we’d found our missing manuscript when we came across that Psalter in the bog,” Dawson said. “So where does this book fit in?”
“I believe the artifacts you found in the bog—along with this book—tell a story.” Martin Gwynne motioned them to sit. “It’s a story of philosophical rivalry and heresy and hatred. Let me begin with my own story. I came to this place nearly twenty years ago in search of a dazzling creative thinker, an Irishman with a Greek name, Eriugena—it means ‘Irish-born.’ I followed him here, based on a brief passage in a medieval history, a mention of his return, at the end of his life, to the place where he had been born in Ireland. That birthplace was named for the first time. And it was this place, an area kn
own as An Feadán Mór—Faddan More.”
“This medieval history you mention, it wouldn’t happen to be a revised edition of Gesta Pontificum Anglorum by William of Malmesbury?” Cormac asked.
“Ah, so you know of my disgrace,” Gwynne said. “Yes. But I didn’t take the Gesta Pontificum. It disappeared a few days after I’d made my discovery, and I don’t believe that was pure accident. Someone else must have intended to make it look as if I’d helped myself. After all, I was the last to consult that manuscript, at least according to the library records.”
“Who would do such a thing?” Cormac asked.
“I have a few theories, all unprovable. Perhaps archaeology as a field of study is less contentious than medieval history,” Gwynne said. “I hope so for your sake. History and philosophy are full of treacheries, rivalries I knew nothing of. And there are certain factions within institutions like the Church who make it their business to carry philosophical feuds from a thousand years ago into the present. People who feel threatened by the ideas presented in books like this.”
“I can’t believe you actually came here looking for Eriugena,” Dawson said.
“And I was not the only one—others followed the same trail. I should explain that Tessa and I lived here for some time before I resumed my work again,” Gwynne said. “After my dismissal from the library, and our daughter’s… injury—” He paused. “It was really all I could manage, looking after Derryth, and Tessa, as best I could. But after a while I began to see signs, undeniable evidence that the man I sought had been here and had left his mark. The first clue was at the chapel.”
“That doorway,” Cormac said. “The carving of the scribe—the initials IOH. And the letters. Eriugena was one of the few Greek scholars of his time.”
“Yes, and so I began to suspect that there was some little truth to the story of his return. But there was no grave, no name carved in stone, no other physical evidence to say that the figure was Eriugena. So I started digging through the old texts, the Dinnsenchus and the Annals of the Four Masters, and the work of antiquarians like O’Donovan. Through their research, they were able to discover accounts of a mysterious manuscript called the Book of Killowen and trace it right back to the ninth century. O’Donovan reported that the book had been burned, the shrine sold and melted down, because that’s what the Beglans wanted everyone to believe. It was their family’s sacred charge, you see, to protect the book from harm. I only convinced Anthony to show me his book about two years ago.”