Death of an Irish Mummy

by Catie Murphy

  Sondra said, “Five minutes,” briskly, and Megan exhaled in relief. Odds were she could safely turn Maire over—she’d had enough practice in her career—but if there were paramedics close to hand, they would have the right equipment to stabilize the old lady, and a stretcher to lift her on to. For the moment she shrugged her coat off and laid it over Maire to help her retain some warmth, even if under her would really be a lot better.

  “What’s she doing in our graveyard?” Jessie wailed. “Is she okay?”

  “For God’s sake, it’s not our graveyard, Jessica!”

  “Well, Mama’s going to be buried here, isn’t she? It’s close enough to ours. Oh my god, I’ve got to call Flynn. What if it’s his grandma?”

  “Then he should hear through the proper authorities!” Sondra barked. “Don’t make this worse than it is!”

  “I don’t see how she could,” Raquel said faintly. She came to stand beside Megan, looking helpless, and smiled with relief when Megan handed the dogs’ leashes over to her as something to do. She clipped them onto their collars, then crouched to pet the puppies, who leaned hard on her and looked soulfully at Maire’s gently breathing form. By then Megan could hear fire engine sirens in the distance, and jutted her chin toward Jessie.

  “Why don’t you go out and meet them, show them where they need to come?”

  Jessie, sniffling, fled to do as she’d been told. Sondra watched her go, then exhaled a sigh that came from the bottom of her soul. “Five minutes,” she said to no one in particular, then looked at Megan. “We could use five minutes of calm. Who is this woman?”

  “Just a nice old lady I met yesterday when I took the dogs for a walk over to the druid’s circle. She was treasure hunting, or at least she had a metal detector.”

  “There can’t possibly be any treasure on this land.” Sondra glanced toward the house, obviously remembering the room of keepsakes, and what Raquel had said about Patrick Williams’s maps. “Can there?”

  “I might be able to figure it out if we had the diary,” Raquel said miserably. “Probably not, but . . . it feels like a mystery, doesn’t it? There’s something strange going on here.”

  Sondra gave her a direct look. “You think? Mother’s been murdered, this poor old woman has been assaulted, someone stole the diary . . .” Her eyebrows drew down and her tone changed. “I hadn’t said it all out loud before. You’re right. It does feel like a classic mystery. I’m sorry for being sharp.”

  Raquel accepted the apology with an astonished nod. Maire Cahill groaned, her eyelashes fluttering open before she sank back into unconsciousness. Megan felt her pulse again, then rose, looking for the paramedics. They were just driving up, taking the fire engine as far down the soft earth lane as they could without it miring. Two of them swung out before the vehicle had fully stopped, getting a stretcher and following Jessie, who led the whole little procession, at a trot. Megan stepped out of their way, saying, “I have some medical training. Her pulse is faint but steady and she just opened her eyes for a moment. She’s cool from lying on the wet ground, but I don’t think she’s hypothermic yet. There’s a wound on the back of her head, but I didn’t want to try moving her, knowing you were on the way.”

  One of them, a stocky man in his fifties, gave her a quick nod. “Thanks. Any idea what happened?”

  “None, except the last time I saw her she had a metal detector and she doesn’t right now.”

  “Ah, hell, Maire.” The other man, slim but broad-shouldered, knelt beside the unconscious woman. “What’re you doing out here, lass, ye great eejit. That treasure hunting was always going to get you in trouble.” The two of them slid a neck brace into place, then carefully but effortlessly moved the little old lady onto the stretcher. A blotch of blood stuck to her hair and the grass, some of the greenery pulling away as she was moved. The stain on the grassy earth was larger than Megan liked to see, and the fact that the wound was clotting meant Maire had been there a while. The younger paramedic crouched, lifting the old woman’s head just a fraction of an inch to examine the wound before sighing and meeting Megan’s eyes. “Looks like something curved, heavy, and blunt hit her.”

  “Something like a metal detector,” Megan suggested, and he nodded.

  “Not that I’d be saying so in any official capacity, but aye.”

  “Yeah. I’d kind of thought so myself. Okay. We’ll see if we can find it, maybe.” As soon as she said it, Megan rejected the idea. The gardaí would need to see the scene, and them tromping all over looking for the metal detector might ruin some key bit of evidence. “Or not.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed. The two men hefted Maire’s stretcher and carried it back to the fire truck. Megan and her clients all stood there watching them, as if at any moment an opportunity to be useful would arise. Unsurprisingly, one didn’t, and in the echoing silence after the truck had driven away, its noisy engines fading in the distance, all four women looked at each other, a little at a loss.

  “Somebody thinks there’s treasure out here,” Megan finally said.

  “Maybe we should go look in that room again,” Raquel said at almost the same time.

  “We don’t have permission.” Sondra’s rules-following inclinations returned to their usual snappish tones, but Jessie gave such a large, disbelieving snort that she started coughing.

  “Anne said we could have it, as far as she was concerned. That’s good enough for me.”

  “Jess, just because you happen to look like her dead sister—”

  “And Geepaw Patrick,” Jessie interrupted with such a perfect mix of defense and “so-there” that Megan thought she might finish up with neener-neener.

  Sondra went on as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “—doesn’t mean we have the right to go crawling around that old house, digging through her family’s old papers—”

  Raquel bellowed, “Well, I don’t care! I don’t care! Ms. Williams said we could have it all and if there’s some answer to why Mama’s dead in that house I’m going to go find it! I don’t care if we’re really the heirs to the title or not, I just want to know why our mother is dead! You can stay out here in the graveyard, for all I care,” she shouted at Sondra. “I’m going to go find out everything I can!” Tears of rage and grief streaming down her face, she handed Megan the dogs’ leashes, stalked past her sisters to the lane, and only wiped her eyes when she had fully passed them. Jessie threw a challenging look at Sondra and chased after Raquel, the two of them going through the damaged graveyard gate together.

  “Shit.” Sondra, obviously stunned at having her power usurped, walked after them with the air of one choosing to do so rather than being forced into it. She made Megan think of a cat who had accidentally fallen off a sofa arm. The dogs, who had sat down to watch the theatrics, swiveled their gazes to Megan as if waiting to see what the leader of the pack thought they should do.

  “Well, it’d be stupid to miss out on it all at this point, wouldn’t it?” she asked them, and they all trundled along after the Williamses.

  * * *

  By the time they got to the house, less than two minutes behind Jessie and Raquel, Flynn Cahill had arrived in a flurry of flushed freckles and wide, panicked eyes. His bicycle lay, wheels spinning, a few metres behind him, and his chest heaved as he ran toward Jessie. Sondra was already shouting about how Jessie shouldn’t have contacted him, but the Irish lad caught Jessie by the shoulders and, almost weeping, said, “Where’s my auntie? What’s happened to her?”

  “You should have gone to the hospital, not come here,” Sondra said icily. “Didn’t Jessie tell you we’d called the paramedics?”

  “They’re here and gone already?” he asked frantically. “Jesus, that was quick. Is she all right? What happened? Jesus, I’ve got to call me ma.” He released Jessie and fumbled for his phone. “Why are you up here? You’ve saved my auntie’s life.” He stopped trying to get the phone out and burst into tears on Jessie’s shoulder again. She patted his back awkwardly and pulled a grimac
e at her sisters, both of whom watched as if they had never seen someone break down with worry and relief before.

  “She had a head wound,” Megan said when it appeared the sisters didn’t know what to say. “Her pulse was steady, though, and they took her away to hospital and will take good care of her. We were up here to look at the graveyard again. Old Ms. Edgeworth said she didn’t mind if Mrs. Williams was buried here. I’m glad we were here,” she offered, and Flynn gave her a weepy, grateful smile.

  “Me too. Me poor auld auntie. She was after looking for treasure again, wasn’t she? She and herself found a couple of coins when they were just girls and Auntie Maire has always been sure there must be more. It didn’t help that herself had a few coins from when her granduncle was a lad, either, so it seemed all the more real. Jesus, I never thought it would get her half killed, though.”

  Megan, baffled, said, “Who’s ‘herself?’” and Flynn looked at her like she was daft.

  “Anne Edgeworth, of course. She and Auntie Maire were thick as thieves when they were girls, but they fell out when Patricia Edgeworth married the man Auntie Maire fancied. Auntie was furious glad when herself finally left the grounds after her da died.”

  Megan exchanged a glance with the sisters. “Furious glad?”

  “She hated the idea of the house going to ruin, but she wanted to be able to poke around looking for treasure. I’d say she’s walked every inch of the grounds in the past forty years.”

  “So there’s not any treasure.” Raquel’s shoulders slumped. “So why did someone murder Mama?”

  “There have to be answers in there,” Jessie said with determination. “Flynn, you should go see your aunt. I’m sorry I didn’t think to tell you they’d gotten here and brought her somewhere safe already.”

  “I wouldn’t have seen it anyway, biking hell-bent for leather like I was.” Flynn looked back at his bicycle, which had gone still except for what motion the wind could tease out of its wheels. “What an eejit I am, thinking I could get here fast enough to make a difference. Or that I’d be any help at the hospital, either.”

  “She’ll be happy if you’re there when she wakes up,” Jessie whispered. “We didn’t get that chance. You should go and see her.”

  “Oh.” Flynn paled. “Shite. I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

  “Just go,” Sondra said wearily. “Let Jessie know how she’s doing, when you find out. We hope she’ll be all right.”

  Emotional colour flooded the young man’s face again. “Thanks, that’s very good of you.” He righted his bike and rode off much more slowly, Megan suspected, than he’d arrived.

  Raquel, watching him, said, “I really hoped there would be a treasure,” and began, quietly, to cry again. Jessie crowded close to hug her, and Sondra joined them, although with a somewhat impatient sigh. Megan squatted to pet the dogs, keeping her head bowed so she wasn’t intrusively watching the sisters, but keeping an eye on them through her eyelashes.

  “Come on.” Jessie sounded utterly wrecked. “There’s got to be some kind of explanation. If it’s not here, maybe we’ll find it somewhere else, but that room seems like our best shot.”

  Everyone looked toward the house, with its dark windows reflecting clouds and scattered patches of blue. At least it hadn’t rained in the past few hours. Megan shuddered to think of what would have happened to Maire Cahill if it had.

  “We didn’t even try turning any lights on yesterday,” Sondra said. “There’s probably no electricity anyway. We should have brought real flashlights.”

  “Oh! I’ve got some in the boot! For emergencies,” Megan clarified as the sisters turned surprised gazes toward her. She hurried back to the car, dogs tangling around her ankles, and got two torches from the Bentley’s trunk. Both of them shone with intense LED brilliance when she tested them, casting blue shadows across the yellowed lawn. Satisfied, Megan brought them to her clients. Jessie and Sondra each took one, leaving Raquel faintly put out, but not enough to argue. She and Megan trailed behind the other two, both of them pulling their phones out to add to the light once they’d entered the house.

  A message notification from an hour or so earlier scrolled across Megan’s screen as she turned the phone on. She flicked it open and stumbled, reading it. Raquel caught her. “Megan? Are you okay?”

  “I—I—yes. I just—you . . . here. This is . . . this is for you. All of you.” Heart hammering, she handed the phone with its open message to Raquel, and the other two sisters turned back to see what was going on.

  The text had come from Detective Bourke, and said, in its entirety, The DNA results came back. They’re the titular heirs.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Williams sisters weren’t, in Megan’s experience, usually harmonious, but their chorus of half-shouted, “What?” sounded as if it had been rehearsed to be pitch-perfect. The next several seconds were considerably less melodious, with all three sisters repeating variations on what in higher and more incredulous tones, with Megan trying to explain without shouting. Finally Sondra dropped her voice and blared, “Who had the DNA test run?”

  “Detective Bourke.” Megan took a deep breath and waited for more shouting to subside before going any further. The dogs, agitated at all the noise, ran in circles and whined, which helped to quiet the Williams sisters more, Megan thought, than much of anything else would. “Detective Bourke thinks, like you do, that your mother’s death must have something to do with the title. He didn’t think proving it would necessarily lead anywhere, but . . .” She sighed and shrugged. “But he’s a nice man, really, and he thought you’d like to at least know for sure, so he put a priority request through to get a DNA test run.”

  “You knew this?” Sondra asked incredulously. “You knew and you didn’t tell us?”

  “I didn’t want to raise your hopes.”

  Complex expressions flashed over Sondra’s face, ending in resigned acceptance. “I suppose it would have been just one more thing to get wound up over.” Abruptly, like she had only just realized what Bourke’s message said, she took a step back, looking faint. “We really are the heirs?”

  Raquel whispered, “I knew it. Mama knew it. Oh, I wish she was here now . . .” Tears welled up and Jessie reached over to wipe her eyes like she was a child, then wiped at her own eyes.

  “She’d be so happy. And—I guess we can tell Miss Edgeworth that we really are family. That priest she mentioned will let Mama be buried here in that case, right?”

  “Father Anthony.” Sondra looked toward the front door, like she could see through the heavy oak to the driveway. “She said he’d come up here. I wonder where he is.”

  “It could be hours,” Megan said wryly. “There’s no point in hanging around waiting for him. We might as well go upstairs and do our sleuthing.”

  “At least we know we’ve got a right to the materials,” Raquel said. “That makes me feel better.”

  Jessie gave her a thin smile. “Not that it was going to stop us.”

  “Right.” Raquel returned the smile, took her little sister’s hand, and went up the stairs with her. Sondra, Megan, and the dogs followed a few steps behind, dust blurring under their feet. They’d left a lot of prints the day before, with Sondra’s pointy-toed high heels the most distinctive of them. They’d also taken more care to walk in each other’s footprints on the way up than down: Sondra’s points were only visible occasionally at the tops of the upward prints, but clear and distinct coming down again. The dogs’ prints were all over everything, and Megan thought if they’d been trying to sneak, it hadn’t worked very well.

  “Holy crap,” Jessie breathed as they got to the top of the stairs. “Holy crap, this whole place—it’s not, but it could be ours. Like, it’s our . . . legacy. Holy crap. That’s . . . holy crap!”

  Even Sondra blurted a giggle at that. “Yeah. You’re . . . yeah. Can you even imagine?”

  Her sisters said, “No!” and “Yes!” simultaneously, sending them all into another giggle. “Not that we
want it,” Sondra added more grimly, but like she was trying to convince herself. “The upkeep on the place would be impossible.”

  “Only if there’s no treasure,” Raquel said with a sigh. The door to the odd little storage room stood ajar, and she pushed it open as Jessie lifted her torch up to light the space. They both stopped so suddenly that Megan and Sondra nearly ran into them, and the puppies did squirm between their ankles to sniff around. Raquel whispered, “Oh no,” and Jessie lowered the light as Megan and Sondra peeked around them.

  The tidy piles and stacks they’d left the day before had been upended, papers and chaos everywhere. The box of Patrick’s things lay on its side, entirely empty, and his portrait had been thrown to one side, its glass broken. Raquel whispered, “Oh no,” again, and backed out of the doorway as Sondra, her jaw set, shouldered her way in and growled, “I’m gonna kill somebody.”

  Megan thought she might well do it, if the perpetrator were to present themselves in that moment. Enraged colour stained Sondra’s jawline and cheekbones, and she held her hands in claws like she would tear something apart if she could. “These are ours,” she snarled. “This is our family’s history. How dare they, how—” The next sound she made was of inarticulate anger. It turned to equally furious tears in a heartbeat and, trembling with fury, she righted Patrick’s box and picked up a handful of papers to tap them together into tidiness. She put them away neatly and selected another pile to make neat again, faster this time. By the third handful, her sisters had joined her, all of them acting with the swift, strangely precise motions of rage cleaning. Megan pulled the dogs, who both wanted to “help,” back a few steps. First Sondra, then Jessie, found somewhere to put her torch, and all three of them ended up kneeling in the mess, not just tidying papers, but sometimes gently looking through them, then putting them away as if they’d become suddenly precious. Megan backed further away, whispered, “Let’s just look around,” to the dogs, and crept down the hallway, leaving the sisters to their grief and anger and cleaning.