The Celtic Riddle (17 page)

I went to the front desk to retrieve, from safekeeping, what we were
calling the Master List, and added the Boar's Head clue to it, then
studied it for a while. I took a fresh piece of paper, drew a line down
the middle, and marked one column Amairgen 's Song and the other Ogham
clues, and looked at what we had.

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

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 red

It was all rather baffling. The ogham clues didn't seem to have
anything in common with the lines of the poem, other than that the
clues in the poem had led to their discovery. Was there supposed to be
a direct relationship? I didn't know. It seemed to me that it was
possible that the first ogham clue referred to a real place. What of
the rest? Almu's white to Maeve's red sounded like a board game to me,
White Queen or something to Red whatever. I assumed that Maeve wasn't
Garda Maeve Minogue, although I had absolutely no basis for thinking
that. Maeve, I knew, had been an ancient Celtic queen.

Three of the ogham clues had a something-to-something-else pattern,
again perhaps directions, but the trouble was I didn't know what, or
where, any of these things were. Stones were big, that was certain. The
clues irritated me: they were either coy or the product of someone who
thought he knew a whole lot more than the rest of us. I felt I was
being toyed with and by a dead man at that. But I did acknowledge,
reluctantly, that had the circumstances been different, that is, had
the family and the rest of us been working together amicably, this
might have been fun. But whose fault was it they didn't?

A curse be on Eamon Byrne, I thought, rather uncharitably, which led
me right back to what Deirdre had said and to the other hints about
something bad in the past that no one would tell me. I understood their
reticence. Really, why should they tell a total stranger, and one from
far away, their worst secrets? This was the Dingle, after all, a wild
and relatively remote place with its own ways. Even in Ireland, I
suspected, it would be regarded as someplace different: the Gael-tacht,
the Gaelic-speaking part of Ireland, a throwback in an ail-too modern
world. But it was frustrating nonetheless.

I decided that maybe we really would have to come at this several
different ways. Malachy, Kevin, and Jennifer could search for more
clues. Alex I'd send on another research project, to the local library,
or wherever, to begin to identify the names in the ogham clues. Myself,
I thought I'd do a little poking around in Eamon Byrne's past. After
all, we had the time. We were stuck here for a while as the murder
investigation marked its stately course. Currently, we were awaiting
the possible exhumation of John Heriihy to check for poison in his
system, an outcome I didn't doubt for a minute.

Rob, I thought, was perfectly happy to stay indefinitely. He'd
managed to convince his superiors on the force back home to lend him to
the local authorities for a while, a stroke of good fortune, according
to Rob, as it meant he'd be paid while he was here. I rather thought he
would consider it a stroke of good fortune for other reasons, but held
my tongue. Jennifer was only too happy to be able to stay a little
longer. While Rob had initially objected to her taking sailing lessons
from Padraig Gilhooly, who he reasoned was part of a murder
investigation, I'd persuaded him to lighten up a little, there being no
evidence whatsoever to implicate Padraig. Several of Paddy's chums had
attested to his presence at their favorite watering hole the afternoon
the Will was being read and the evening Michael had died. His
landlady-he had a flat in town-claimed to have heard him come in
shortly after closing time, not to leave again till morning. In any
event, Jennifer loved her sailing lessons, was beginning to make some
friends in town, and had really blossomed, not nearly the shy and
rather immature person I'd arrived with. Alex was his normal calm self.

The only problem for me was the shop, and I was starting to fret
about it. Sarah didn't seem terribly perturbed when I told her my
return had been delayed, saying that Clive was being very helpful. This
development I found disturbing. What exactly was Clive, the rat, up to,
I wondered. I decided I'd go up to the room before the others came back
so I could phone my friend, and Clive's new partner, Moira, to assess
the situation without having to admit I was worried. I hesitated at the
bottom of the stairs, then turned back to put the Master List under
lock and key once again at the front desk. I felt sort of silly doing
this: carrying around my cash and credit cards, but locking up a piece
of paper, but right from the start, I'd decided to be safe rather than
sorry.

A good thing it was too. I opened the door to Jennifer's and my
room, and my jaw dropped. If I needed confirmation that we weren't the
only ones in this treasure hunt, I had it. The place was a shambles.
The room had been thoroughly searched. The mattresses had been lifted
and pushed against a wall, the carpet tossed in a heap in a corner; the
drawers were all open and contents dumped; our suitcases had been
lifted down from the shelf in the cupboard, opened and dropped as well.
Even the bathroom had been searched. It looked as if every packet in my
cosmetic bag had been opened.

Conail again, I wondered, or worse yet, Breeta? As much as I didn't
like to think it, I had told her that very afternoon that we had
several clues back at the Inn. At peak time in the bar, the residential
part of the Inn was pretty much left untended. The front door of that
part of the Inn was kept locked, but to someone who knew their way
around the place, it would be easy enough to get in, through the
kitchen, or the entrance off the bar. I'd given her plenty of time
while I'd moped around the bar, licking my wounds after her accusations.

Shocked, I just stood there staring at the mess. Eventually I became
conscious of footsteps coming up the stairs and two familiar voices.

"It's my money," Jennifer said. "You said so. You said I could do
whatever I wanted with it."

"No daughter of mine," Rob began as they rounded the corner and
stopped dead at the open door. Jennifer gasped.

Two thoughts came into my mind at that moment. One was that Rob was
just being an old poop where Jennifer was concerned, and I was going to
tell him so. The second was that it was time I saw a little more of
Ireland.

We stood silently in the doorway for a moment or two.

"Ffuts ym gnihcuot mucs etah I," Jennifer said at last.

"Oot em," I agreed.

Chapter Nine

A SALMON IN A POOL

DEIRDRE almost dropped the tea tray when she saw me. And a shame it
would have been too, as it would have fallen on an exquisite antique
Aubusson carpet, and dashed to pieces some very fine porcelain cups. I
suppose it might actually have cost her her job, the obsession of her
new employer being what it was.

While nobody in these parts talks about it much, there was a period
of time when Dublin was the second city of the British Empire,
rivalling, and in some ways surpassing, London in grandeur and
conspicuous consumption. London had its Thames, Dublin its Liffey, both
cities taking advantage of strategic maritime positions to ensure a
vibrant trade in goods from the far-flung reaches of the Empire, and in
Dublin's case, a corresponding outflow of its magnificent
craftsmanship, silver, porcelain, glass, and textiles, to grace stately
English homes across the Irish sea.

In addition to bitter memories of repression and sectarian violence,
that period left Dublin with some im- pressive public monuments-broad
sweeping avenues, soaring bridges and architectural gems like the Four
Courts, home of the Irish law courts since 1796, and the Custom House
with its graceful arcades, columns and soaring dome-together with some
glorious urban spaces like St. Stephen's Green, a perfect Georgian
square surrounding a pleasant little park, where the offices of
McCafferty & McGlynn, Solicitors, were to be found.

While Deirdre Flood might have thought that Dublin was sufficiently
far away that she would never have to see any of us associated with
Second Chance again, it was, in reality, only a few short hours' train
ride from Tralee.

Jennifer had mentioned several times that she'd like to see Dublin,
and I'd managed, quite easily, to persuade Rob to let me take her there
for a couple of days' sight-seeing. This little excursion of ours
worked well for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that we
were all getting on each other's nerves. What no daughter of Rob's was
to do, apparently, was to cut her hair, buy herself dark lipstick and
black clothes- tights, turtleneck, and a short skirt that she wore with
her trusty Dr Martens-and, horror of horrors, put a rhinestone stud in
her nose. Telling Rob that almost every girl Jennifer's age had done
something similar fell on deaf ears, and so I'd resorted to calling him
an old poop to his face, as I'd promised myself that I would if he
didn't listen to reason, a statement that, while true in my opinion,
did not exactly endear me to him. A little space between us for a while
seemed an awfully good idea.

The second reason was that the less-than-subtle search of our room
had unnerved us all, although to be truthful, I was having more trouble
dealing with scum having touched my stuff than Jennifer was. She'd been
pacified by a new room and once-laundered clothes, immediately taken
care of by Aidan and Sheila, the innkeepers, who had, if anything, been
more upset than we were. I, however, found myself surreptitiously
making my way to a laundromat to wash everything for a second time. A
little space between me and whoever had trashed our room at The Three
Sisters Inn seemed a good idea too.

I suspect Rob thought that keeping me away from the Dingle, and the
Byrne family treasure hunt and ensuing murder investigation in
particular, and his daughter from Padraig Gilhooly's sailing classes,
was also an excellent plan. He would therefore have been disappointed
to learn that my reason for going to Dublin was to pay a visit to
McCafferty and McGlynn, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and that after
seeing Jennifer off at the gates of Trinity College on a two-hour
walking tour of historic Dublin, I headed directly there.

Eamon Byrne had said the two solicitors, or legal bookends as he'd
referred to them, had become too accustomed to the good life in St.
Stephen's Green to refuse him any request, and I could see that would
be easy enough to do.

Their offices were located in a town house on the square right in
the heart of the city. The exterior was pure Georgian, white, with a
cheerful red door flanked by two columns, and crowned by a magnificent
arched fan light above. Similar town houses, each entrance just a
little bit distinctive, stretched out on either side, and all around
the square: doors in every color imaginable from black to yellow to
pink to lilac, some with similar fan lights, others with sidelights. A
brass knocker on this one matched the discreet nameplate, C. B.
McCafferty and R. A. McGlynn, Solicitors.

The door opened into a foyer of black and white marble floor tiles,
black urns and white walls, with lovely decorative rococo plasterwork
on the ceiling. A bust, vaguely Roman looking, a Caesar, perhaps,
occupied one corner. It was as if one had entered the town home of a
wealthy Irishman in the middle of the eighteenth century, the only
jarring note the receptionist's computer and telephone. Jarring or not,
McCafferty and McGlynn were doing quite nicely, thank you, that much
was clear.

Straight ahead of me was a staircase. For some reason, this reminded
me that at one time in the royal courts of England and Europe, one's
worth was reflected in the room in which one was received at court. The
closer one came to the monarch's private chambers, the more important
one was. I wondered if I'd make it up the stairs.

As it turned out, I got as far as the second of four floors, if I'd
counted stories correctly as I'd approached from the street. Not that
my progress there was entirely effortless. I had decided upon a
surprise attack and came armed only with a letter from Alex,
coconspirator that he was, but no appointment.

"I know this is really presumptuous of me," I said to the
receptionist, a young woman with perfect fingernails, which she
obviously worked on most of the day. "I'm sure that Mr. McCafferty and
Mr. McGlynn are both extremely busy, but I'm in Dublin quite
unexpectedly and must soon be off back to Canada, and I was wondering
whether there might be any chance I could have a few moments with one
or the other of them. I have some questions about Mr. Alex Stewart's
inheritance from the Eamon Byrne estate." I hoped I sounded suitably
contrite for this serious breach of legal etiquette. Up until the words
"Eamon Byrne," she'd been regarding me with considerably less interest
than her fingernails, but those, apparently, were the magic words.
"Both Mr. McGlynn and Mr. McCafferty are with a client," she said in
upper-crust vowels she obviously worked hard on. "I'm not sure when
they'll be free."

"I'll wait," I said, plunking myself down on a very fine wing chair
in the corner of the room. She looked at me for a moment or two and
then reluctantly picked up the phone. What followed was one of those
conversations in which the secretary pretends she is talking to an
assistant when she is, in fact, talking to one of the lawyers. "There
is a Ms. McClintoch here from Canada wishing to speak to Mr. McCafferty
or Mr. McGlynn about Mr. Byrne's estate," she said. There was a pause.
"No, she does not have an appointment." Another pause. "Yes," she said.
"One of the solicitors will try to work you in," she said, hanging up
the phone. "You may wait upstairs. You might want to have a look at
this," she added, handing me an engraved card which listed McCafferty
and McGlynn's fees for various services. They were, in a word,
breathtaking.