An Ensuing Evil and Others

by Peter Tremayne

  “A quarrel between lovers?” asked Ross. “Love to hatred turned-and all that, as Billy Shakespeare succinctly put it?”

  Fane nodded. “Gray was giving Elgee the push, both as lover and employee, and so Elgee decided to end his lover’s career in mid-flight, so to speak. There is a note in his attache case that Elgee was to be sacked immediately without compensation.”

  Tilley, who had been sitting quietly, shook his head vehemently.

  “No there isn’t,” he interrupted. “We went through the list. I told you that the initials O. T. E. referred to Otis Elliott. I had faxed that dismissal through before we boarded the plane.”

  Fane smiled softly. “You have forgotten F. T”

  “But that’s my-”

  “You didn’t share your boss’s passion for Latin tags, did you? It was the F. T. that confused me. I should have trusted that a person with Grays reputation would not have written F followed by a lower case t if he meant two initials F. T. I missed the point. It was not your initials at all, Mr. Tilley. It was Ft meant as an abbreviation. Specifically, fac, from facere: ‘to do’; and totum: ‘all things.’ Factotum. And who was Gray’s factotum?”

  There was a silence.

  “I think we will find that this murder was planned for a week or two at least. Once I began to realize what the mechanism was that killed Gray, all I had to do was look for the person capable of devising that mechanism as well as having motive and opportunity. Hold out your hands, Mr. Tilley.”

  Reluctantly the secretary did so.

  “You can’t seriously see those hands constructing a delicate mechanism, can you?” Fane said. “No, Elgee, the model maker and handyman, doctored one of Grays inhalers so that when it was depressed it would explode with an impact into the mouth, shooting a needle into the brain. Simple but effective. He knew that Gray did not like to be seen using the inhaler in public. The rest was left to chance, and it was a good chance. It almost turned out to be the ultimate impossible crime. It might have worked, had not our victim and his murderer been too fond of their Latin in-jokes.”

  THE SPITEFUL SHADOW

  “It is so obvious who killed poor Brother Sioda that it worries me.” Sister Fidelma stared in bewilderment at the woebegone expression of the usually smiling, cherubic Abbot Laisran. “I do not understand you, Laisran,” she told her old mentor, pausing in the act of sipping her mulled “wine. She was sitting in front of a blazing fire in the hearth of the abbot’s chamber in the great Abbey of’Durrow.

  On the adjacent side of the fireplace, Abbot Laisran slumped in his chair, his wine left abandoned on the carved oak table by his side. He was staring moodily into the leaping flames. “Something worries me about the simplicity of this matter. There are things in life that appear so simple that you get a strange feeling about them. You question whether things can be so simple, and sure enough, you often find that they are so simple because they have been made to appear simple. In this case, everything fits together so flawlessly that I question it.”

  Fidelma drew a heavy sigh. She had only just arrived at Durrow to bring a psalter, a book of Latin psalms written by her brother, Colgu, King of Cashel, as a gift for the abbot. But she had found her old friend Abbot Laisran in a preoccupied frame of mine. A member of his community had been murdered, and the culprit had been easily identified as another member. Yet it was unusual to see Laisran so worried. Fidelma had known him since she was a little girl, and it was he who had persuaded her to take up the study of law. Further, when she had reached the qualification of Anruth, one degree below that of Ollamh, the highest rank of learning, it had been Laisran who had advised her to join a religious community on being accepted as a ddlaigh, an advocate of the Brehon Court. He had felt that this would give her more opportunities in life.

  Usually, Abbot Laisran was full of jollity and good humor. Anxiety did not sit well on his features, for he was a short, rotund, red-faced man. He had been born with that rare gift of humor and a sense that the world was there to provide enjoyment to those who inhabited it. Now he appeared like a man on whose shoulders the entire troubles of the world rested.

  “Perhaps you had better tell me all about it,” Fidelma invited. “I might be able to give some advice.”

  Laisran raised his head, and there was a new expression of hope in his eyes. “Any help you can give, Fidelma… Truly, the facts are, as I say, lucid enough. But there is just something about them-” He paused and then shrugged. “I’d be more than grateful to have your opinion.”

  Fidelma smiled reassuringly. “Then let us begin to hear some of these lucid facts.”

  “Two days ago, Brother Sioda was founded stabbed to death in his cell. He had been stabbed several times in the heart.”

  “Who found him and when?”

  “He had not appeared at morning prayers. So my steward, Brother Cruinn, went along to his cell to find out whether he was ill. Brother Sioda lay murdered on his bloodstained bed.”

  Fidelma waited while the abbot paused, as if to gather his thoughts.

  “We have, in the abbey, a young woman called Sister Scathach. She is very young. She joined us as a child because, so her parents told us, she heard things. Sounds in her head. Whispers. About a month ago, our physician became anxious about her state of health. She had become-” He paused as if trying to think of the right word. “-she believed she was hearing voices instructing her.”

  Fidelma raised her eyes slightly in surprise.

  Abbot Laisran saw the movement and grimaced. “She has always been what one might call eccentric, but the eccentricity has grown so that her behavior became bizarre. A month ago I placed her in a cell and asked one of the apothecary’s assistants, Sister Slaine, to watch over her. Soon after Brother Sioda was found, the steward and I went to Sister Scathachs cell. The door was always locked. It was a precaution that we had recently adopted. Usually the key is hanging on a hook outside the door. But the key was on the inside, and the door was locked. A bloodstained robe was found in her cell and a knife. The knife, too, was bloodstained. It was obvious that Sister Scathach was guilty of this crime.”

  Abbot Laisran stood up and went to a chest. He removed a knife whose blade was discolored with dried blood. Then he drew forth a robe. It was clear that it had been stained in blood.

  “Poor Brother Sioda,” murmured Laisran. “His penetrated heart must have poured blood over the girl’s clothing.”

  Fidelma barely glanced at the robes. “The first question I have to ask is why would you and the steward go straight from the murdered man’s cell to that of Sister Scathach?” she demanded.

  Abbot Laisran compressed his lips for a moment. “Because only the day before the murder, Sister Scathach had prophesied his death and the manner of it. She made the pronouncement only twelve hours before his body was discovered, saying that he would die by having his heart ripped out.”

  Fidelma folded her hands before her, gazing thoughtfully into the fire. “She was violent then? You say that you had her placed in a locked cell with a Sister to look after her?”

  “But she was never violent before the murder,” affirmed the abbot.

  “Yet she was confined to her cell?”

  “A precaution, as I say. During these last four weeks she began to make violent prophecies. Saying voices instructed her to do so.”

  “Violent prophecies but you say that she was not violent?” Fidelma’s tone was skeptical.

  “It is difficult to explain,” confessed Abbot Laisran. “The words were violent, but she was not. She was a gentle girl, but she claimed that the shadows from the Otherworld gave her instructions; they told her to foretell the doom of the world, its destruction by fire and flood when mountains would be hurled into the sea and the seas rise up and engulf the land.”

  Fidelma pursed her lips cynically. “Such prophecies have been common since the dawn of time,” she observed.

  “Such prophesies have alarmed the community here, Fidelma,” admonished Abbot Laisran. “It wa
s as much for her sake that I suggested Sister Slaine make sure that Sister Scathach was secured in her cell each night and kept an eye upon each day.”

  “Do you mean that you feared members of the community would harm Sister Scathach rather than she harm members of the community?” queried Fidelma.

  The abbot inclined his head. “Some of these predictions were violent in the extreme, aimed at one or two particular members of the community, foretelling their doom, casting them into the everlasting hellfire.”

  “You say that during the month she has been so confined, the pronouncements grew more violent.”

  “The more she was constrained, the more extreme the pronouncements became,” confessed the abbot.

  “And she made just such a pronouncement against Brother Sioda? That is why you and your steward made the immediate link to Sister Scathach?”

  “It was.”

  “Why did she attack Brother Sioda?” she asked. “How well did she know him?”

  “As far as I am aware, she did not know him at all. Yet when she made her prophecy, Brother Sioda told me that she seemed to know secrets about him that he thought no other person knew. He was greatly alarmed and said he would lock himself in that night so that no one could enter.”

  “So his cell door was locked when your steward went there after he had failed to attend morning prayers?”

  Abbot Laisran shook his head. “When Brother Cruinn went to Sioda’s cell, he found that the door was shut but not locked. The key was on the floor inside his cell…. This is the frightening thing…. There were bloodstains on the key.”

  “And you tell me that you found a bloodstained robe and the murder weapon in Sister Scathach’s cell?”

  “We did,” agreed the abbot. “Brother Cruinn and I.” “What did Sister Scathach have to say to the charge?” “This is just it, Fidelma. She was bewildered. I know when people are lying or pretending. She was just bewildered. But then she accepted the charge meekly.”

  Fidelma frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Sister Scathach simply replied that she was a conduit for the voices from the Otherworld. The shadows themselves must have punished Brother Sioda as they had told her they would. She said that they must have entered her corporeal form and used it as an instrument to kill him, but she had no knowledge of the fact, no memory of being disturbed that night.”

  Fidelma shook her head. “She sounds a very sick person.” “Then you don’t believe in shadows from the Otherworld?” “I believe in the Otherworld and our transition from this one to that but… I think that those who repose in the Otherworld have more to do than to try to return to this one to murder people. I have investigated several similar matters where shadows of the Other-world have been blamed for crimes. Never have I found such claims to be true. There is always a human agency at work.”

  Abbot Laisran shrugged. “So we must accept that the girl is guilty?”

  “Let me hear more. Who was this Brother Sioda?” “A young man. He worked in the abbey fields. A strong man. A farmer, not really one fitted in mind for the religious life.” Abbot Laisran paused and smiled. “I’m told that he was a bit of a rascal before he joined us. A seducer of women.” “How long had he been with you?”

  “A year, perhaps a little more.”

  “And he was well behaved during this time? Or did his tendency as a rascal, as you describe it, continue?”

  Abbot Laisran shrugged again. “No complaints were brought to me, and yet I had reason to think that he had not fully departed from his old ways. There was nothing specific, but I noticed the way some of the younger religieuse behaved when they were near him. Smiling, nudging each other… You know the sort of thing?”

  “How was this prophecy of Brother Siodas death delivered?” she replied, ignoring his rhetorical question.

  “It was at the midday mealtime. Sister Scathach had been quiet for some days and so, instead of eating alone in her cell, Sister Slaine brought her to the refectory. Brother Sioda was sitting nearby and hardly had Sister Scathach been brought into the hall than she pointed a finger at Brother Sioda and proclaimed her threat so that everyone in the refectory could hear it.”

  “Do you know what words she used?”

  “I had my steward note them down. She cried out: ‘Beware, vile fornicator, for the day of reckoning is at hand. You, who have seduced and betrayed, will now face the settlement. Your heart will be torn out. Gormflaith and her baby will be avenged. Prepare yourself. For the shadows of the Otherworld have spoken. They await you.’ That was what she said before she was taken back to her cell.”

  Fidelma nodded thoughtfully. “You said something about her knowing facts about Brother Siodas life that he thought no one else knew?”

  “Indeed. Brother Sioda came to me in a fearful state and said that Scathach could not have known about Gormflaith and her child.”

  “Gormflaith and her child? Who were they?”

  “Apparently, so Brother Sioda told me, Gormflaith was the first girl he had ever seduced when he was a youth. She was fourteen and became pregnant with his child but died giving birth. The baby, too, died.”

  “Ah!” Fidelma leaned forward with sudden interest. “And you say that Brother Sioda and Sister Scathach did not know one another? How then did she recognize him in the refectory?”

  Abbot Laisran paused a moment. “Brother Sioda told me that he had never spoken to her, but of course he had seen her in the refectory and she must have seen him.”

  “But if no words ever passed between them, who told her about his past life?”

  Abbot Laisran’s expression was grim. “Brother Sioda told me that there was no way that she could have known. Maybe the voices that she heard were genuine?”

  Fidelma looked amused. “I think I would rather check out whether Brother Sioda had told someone else or whether there was someone from his village here who knew about his past life.”

  “Brother Sioda was from Mag Luirg, one of the Ui Ailello. No one here would know from whence he came or have any connection with the kingdom of Connacht. I can vouch for that.”

  “My theory is that when you subtract the impossible, you will find your answers in the possible. Clearly, Brother Sioda passed on this information somehow. I do not believe that wraiths whispered this information.”

  Abbot Laisran was silent.

  “Let us hear about Sister Slaine,” she continued. “What made you choose her to look after the girl?”

  “Because she worked in the apothecary and had some understanding of those who were of bizarre humors.”

  “How long had she been looking after Sister Scathach?”

  “About a full month.”

  “And how had the girl’s behavior been during that time?”

  “For the first week it seemed better. Then it became worse. More violent, more assertive. Then it became quiet again. That was when we allowed Sister Scathach to go to the refectory.”

  “The day before the murder?”

  “The day before the murder,” he confirmed.

  “And Sister Slaine slept in the next cell to the girl?”

  “She did.”

  “And did she always lock the door of Sister Scathachs cell at night?”

  “She did.”

  “And on that night?”

  “Especially on that night of her threat to Sioda.”

  “And the key was always hung on a hook outside the cell so that there was no way Sister Scathach could have reached it?”

  When Abbot Laisran confirmed this, Fidelma sighed deeply. “I think that I’d better have a word with Sister Scathach and also with Sister Slaine.”

  Fidelma chose to see Sister Scathach first. She was surprised by her appearance as she entered the gloomy cell the girl inhabited. The girl was no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, thin with pale skin. She looked as though she had not slept for days; large dark areas of skin showed under her eyes, which were black, wide, and staring. The features were almost cadaverous
, as if the skin was tightly drawn over the bones.

  She did not look up as Fidelma and Laisran entered. She sat on the edge of her bed, hands clasped between her knees, gazing intentiy on the floor. She appeared more like a lost waif than like a killer.

  “Well, Scathach,” Fidelma began gently, sitting next to the girl, much to the surprise of Laisran, who remained standing at the door, “I hear that you are possessed of exceptional powers.”

  The girl started at the sound of her voice and then shook her head. “Powers? It is not a power but a curse that attends me.”

  “You have a gift of prophecy.”

  “A gift that I would willing return to whoever cursed me with it.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “They say that I killed Brother Sioda. I did not know the man. But if they tell me that it was so, then it must be so.”

  “You remember nothing of the event?”

  “Nothing at all. So far as I am aware, I went to bed, fell asleep, and was only awoken when the steward and the abbot came into my cell to confront me.”

  “Do you remember prophesying his death in the refectory?”

  The girl nodded quickly. “That I do remember. But I simply repeated what the voice told me to say.”

  “The voice?”

  “The voice of the shadow from the Otherworld. It attends me at night and wakes me if I slumber. It tells me what I should say and when. Then the next morning I repeat the message as the shadows instruct me.”

  “You hear this voice… or voices… at night?”

  The girl nodded.

  “It comes to you here in your cell?” pressed Fidelma. “Nowhere else?”

  “The whispering is at night when I am in my cell,” confirmed the girl.

  “And it was this voice that instructed you to prophesy Brother Sioda’s death? It told you to speak directly to him? Did it also tell you to mention Gormflaith and her baby?”

  The girl nodded in answer to all her questions.

  “How long have you heard such voices?”

  “I am told that it has been so since I was a little girl.”