The Celtic Riddle

Chapter Three. THE ROAR OF THE SEA

I'VE been thinking," I said. This was cause for deep relief for me, thinking again I mean, after a couple of days of walking around in a kind of shocked and vacuous haze in which even the slightest mental effort seemed beyond me. I was still feeling a little shaky, as if I'd seriously overdosed on caffeine or adrenaline, and jumped at every loud noise. But I felt at last as if I was starting to come around, all things considered, the shock of finding John Herlihy gradually fading. Apparently, however, Rob was not as keen as I was on my return to relative mental acuity.

"Why do I think this is going to be trouble?" he groaned, setting two foaming pints of Kilkenny cream ale in front of us on the small glass-topped table in the bar in the inn where we were all staying. "We're on vacation, remember."

"I know," I replied, thinking that this was not exactly the vacation I'd been hoping for, thanks to John Herlihy's unfortunate demise. "But we came over here to keep Alex company, and this is about Alex. What I've been thinking," I continued before Rob could stop me, "is that it might be kind of fun to look for this treasure, this item of great value that Eamon Byrne talked about."

Rob made a face. "Bad idea," he said.

"Why?" I said.

"You have a rather short memory," he said. "Shock, I suppose, although imminent middle age can do that to you too. John Herlihy. Dead. Cause of death still under investigation."

"But he fell," I said. "Drunk as a skunk, if you ask me.

"Something of a tippler, you think?"

"It went way beyond tippling," I replied. "I overheard Deirdre of the Sorrows refer to Herlihy as the old souse."

"Am I safe in assuming that you are referring to someone other than the Deirdre of J. M. Synge's unfinished play by that name?"

"Deirdre, the morose-looking maid," I said, "and don't try to distract me with your erudition." Although I have known Rob for a few years now, comments such as these never fail to amaze me. I know I'm guilty of a gross and unfair generalization when I assume policemen don't read playwrights like John Millington Synge, particularly when the only policeman I know, at all well, does.

"So you're assuming he just fell over the edge in a drunken stupor, are you?" Rob asked. There was a tone in his voice that meant I was in for a bit of a lecture. "You can't just assume that, you know," he went on, launching himself fully into the topic. "You have to investigate it thoroughly. Did he just fall, or is there any evidence to support a suspicion that he was pushed, or even that he threw himself over the edge? Footprints, signs of a struggle, marks on the body, that kind of thing."

"I thought you said we were on vacation," I interjected.

He laughed. "Hard to get out of the work mode, isn't it?"

"Not for me," I replied blithely.

"So you weren't eyeing any of the furniture in that fellow Byrne's manor house, thinking you just might pick up a piece or two if they were auctioning any of it off now that he's gone?"

"Nope," I replied.

"Didn't you say he was something of a collector? You didn't think a few items in his collection might find a home in your shop?"

"Not at all," I replied. "Objects of destruction on red velvet are not quite the look we strive for at Green-halgh McClintoch." Well, maybe one or two of those maps, I thought to myself.

He looked suspiciously at me. "And you have not even once worried just a little about the shop while we've been here? I did notice you eyeing the pay phones in Shannon Airport the moment we got off the plane, did I not?"

"I'm not worried at all," I replied. That was patently untrue, and both of us knew it. I had indeed been eyeing the telephones at the airport. I did realize, however, that it was the middle of the night back home, and had managed to restrain myself.

Normally there are always two people in the shop, one to be at the cash, one to help the customers. When I'm off on buying trips, Alex stays in the shop with Sarah; when she's on holiday, it's Alex and I, and so on. But with two of us away, that left Sarah on her own, and Sarah, who's a whiz on the business and financial side of things, but not comfortable on the sales side, was a bit nervous about it all. For a while, I found myself with competing loyalties: looking after Alex or minding the store.

In the end I asked my ex-husband Clive Swain, who had the supremely bad taste to open an antiques store right across the road from Greenhalgh McClintoch, to keep an eye on the place for me, and give Sarah a hand if she needed it. This is much akin to Custer asking Crazy Horse to hold the fort while he goes off for a little RR, of course, but Clive, the rotter, had also dumped his second wife and, when I wasn't looking, taken up with my best friend, Moira, a very successful businesswoman who, I reasoned, was not so far gone in her affection for Clive that she would allow him to ruin my store. I just tried not to think too much about it.

Rob and I were quiet for a minute or two, sipping our beer. I sat admiring our surroundings, the somewhat prosaically named Hunt Room, with glowing fireplace, nicely worn green, gold and red-striped sofas and chairs, the dark green walls lined with prints of English hunting scenes, and a rather valuable, if not to my taste, oil painting of a stag cornered by a pack of hounds, over the mantelpiece. I knew what would happen next, and right on cue, Rob sighed theatrically. "Okay, so after almost twenty-five years in law enforcement, I can't help myself. What makes you so sure that fellow Herlihy just fell?"

"Well it was slippery enough. I should know. I took this something less than graceful tumble down the hill myself, did Alex tell you?"

"He did. He was obviously being very tactful, though. He didn't mention anything about lack of grace."

"It was quite undignified, I assure you. I was lucky to fall on mud and wet grass. It made a mess of my clothes, but I wasn't hurt. The slope was not all that steep, and there were no rocks at the bottom. A few yards either way, though, and I'd have ended up like Herlihy. On top of that, I'd only sipped a small whiskey. And Herlihy, as I mentioned, not only had a reputation for drinking regularly, if Deirdre's comments are anything to go by, but I noticed he kept nipping out of the room for a few seconds at a time. At the time it was quite clear to me that he was sneaking out for a swig or two of something or other."

"Maybe he was going to check the door, or he had a bladder problem, or didn't want the others to see he was overcome with grief or something," Rob interjected.

"I don't think so. His shoes squeaked, and he stopped after a few steps, just about as far as a sideboard in the hall on which there were several bottles of booze, I'd noticed. He had another drink, a rather large one, when Tweedledum or Tweedledee, whichever it was, said how much he'd get. It was about fifteen thousand Irish punt, by the way, which these days is worth more than twenty-five thousand dollars. That should rule out suicide. Why kill yourself the day you come into some money? When Alex and I left to go to the car, he was helping himself again, quite liberally, to the drinks on the sideboard in the hall. It's a wonder he could even stagger to the edge of the cliff!" I concluded.

"There!" Rob exclaimed. "What did I tell you? You've just added an element of doubt to your own theory."

I glared at him. "My point, if only you would allow me to get back to it, is that we're here for a while, pending the results of the autopsy, so why not look for the treasure?"

"But why would you want to?"

"Well, for one thing it wouldn't bother me a bit to beat those po-faced women to it," I replied.

Rob winced. "Aren't you being a little hasty in your judgment of them? What did they do to deserve that?"

"Since you ask, they were horrible to Alex," I said. "When we first arrived, we were left hanging about the front hall for ages, and I overheard Byrne's wife Margaret telling Tweedledum or Tweedledee-those are the lawyers-that she wouldn't have that man in her house. I assumed she was talking about Alex, although come to think about it, it could have been the other lawyer, or Padraig Gilhooly, whoever he is. In any event, Alex went over and introduced himself when we were finally allowed in, and they wouldn't even shake his hand when he offered it."

"It was a bad time for them, don't forget," Rob interjected. Sometimes the man is way too nice.

"I know. But Margaret and the two daughters all have the same expression on their faces, like they've just encountered a bad smell, or something." I paused. "And there's another reason."

"I thought there must be. The real one, this time, I hope," Rob said.

"Alex just loved the cottage. I could tell, without him having to say a word. It's a dream come true for him."

"I'm very glad of that. But he has the cottage. What's your point?"

"My point is, now what? How is he going to look after it? Pay the taxes or water bills? Put in some electricity? Make repairs? Those old places need a lot of upkeep. And unless he wants to keep crossing the property in front of the house, which heaven knows, I wouldn't, he's going to have to put a road in that will cost more than a penny or two, I can assure you. He's on a pension, Rob! If we could find the treasure for him, and it really is worth something as Byrne said it is, Alex could really retire, not just sort of retire and work part time in the store the way he is now.

"We're here now, aren't we?" I wheedled. "And we're not going too far until the police conclude their investigation into John Herlihy's death, although what could take them so long, I can't imagine. Anyway, we'd get to see a little of the countryside around here, while we looked, and we might just have some fun."

"I do understand how you feel about Alex, and maybe he does need the money, but what makes you think we could find it? We don't know the place at all, or the people."

"Piece of cake," I replied. "After all, you are a policeman. You're accustomed to tracking down clues. Already we have two of them, and we know they come from a poem called the 'Song of Amairgen.' "

Rob looked baffled and I felt mildly triumphant, having produced the name of a poem he didn't know. As rare as the occasion might be, I tried not to gloat. "Michael Davis is going to try to persuade Breeta to get her clue out of the safe at the house, and tell us what it is. We'll then have three of the clues. I think there were seven-the mother and three daughters, three more counting Michael, Alex, and someone by the name of Padraig Gilhooly, who incidentally would be about as welcome in that house as a rattlesnake at a garden party, should he choose to show his face there-so we're almost halfway there."

"Halfway where?" Jennifer said, sliding into a chair beside her father. She tossed her windbreaker, a pinky-purple number with the words "Take no Prisoners" emblazoned across the back.

"Half the clues handed out to Eamon Byrne's family yesterday. I'm trying to persuade your father that we should look for the treasure in the Will."

"Brilliant!" Jennifer exclaimed, having managed to pick up the local slang within minutes of our touchdown at Shannon Airport. Or rather, she said something that sounded like ten-ale-erb. Jennifer had taken a class in what was called creative thinking in her last term, in which the teacher had encouraged them to free their minds to think outside the box, to use that odious expression beloved of management consultants, by speaking backward. Jennifer had readily taken to this suggestion, a development her father found intensely irritating. I, however, had a dim memory of school chums doing the same thing, secret societies and the like, and I assumed this was a stage that would pass. I did not wish to stunt her creative thinking, of course, but I hoped it would be soon. "Tiod stel, Dad," she added.

"Not both of you," Rob grumped.

"Have you seen Alex?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "He's down at the docks renting a boat. I've come to ask you both if you'd like to go sailing with us."

"Wonderful idea!" I replied.

"Sailing!" Rob exclaimed, feigning horror at the thought. "You forget I'm a Ukrainian from Saskatchewan. My idea of relaxation is to sit on a porch and watch fields of wheat stretching as far as the eye can see. Now there's a vacation for you. Why risk seasickness, when you could have the taste of dust in your mouth, and not so much as the tiniest breeze to mess up your hair?"

"What hair?" Jennifer grinned as she reached over and patted a small bald spot on the top of her father's head. I noticed she switched to regular speech when she wanted to tease her dad, so he wouldn't miss the jibe.

"Given the absence of dust here, and wheat for that matter," I said, "what are you going to do this afternoon while the rest of us are sailing?"

"I don't know," he replied. "I'll think of something."

There was something in his tone. "Rob!" I said.

"I was thinking maybe I'd just pop down to the local police station-what do they call themselves? Gardai is it?-introduce myself."

"Would you know a vacation if you tripped over it?" I asked. "You wouldn't be planning to prove your theory that John Herlihy met with foul play, would you?" I can't believe this man, I thought. He's absolutely obsessed by his job. How can people be like that, thinking about crime and criminals every waking moment, and maybe even dreaming about it, too? It's a sickness.

"Will you look who's talking like she's an expert on vacations all of a sudden?" he said mildly. "When she hasn't had one in all the years I've know her. No, I'm just trying to improve international relations, inspire a little goodwill between police forces, that sort of thing. Now get going, will you, so I can get on with this noble activity? And try and stay out of trouble, both of you." He gave his daughter an affectionate hug.

Jennifer and I turned left as we exited The Three Sisters Inn, as the guest house where we were all staying was called, and with Jennifer chattering away about all the things she'd have to tell her chums about when she got home, we ambled along a cobblestoned street that wound its way down to the sea past charming littlehouses, shops, and pubs painted sunny colors, yellow, red, blue, and green.

To save money on the trip, I was sharing a room with Jennifer, and Rob and Alex were doing the same. It was not my idea of the perfect holiday, bunking in with an eighteen-year-old, but I found I was enjoying her company, and, as we made our way down to the harbor, I got caught up in the enthusiasm she brought to everything about her. Although she'd been reluctant to come with us at first, she was clearly having a good time now that we were in Ireland. She was on the cusp of adulthood, a little young for her age in some things, in my opinion, but very worldly in others, a whole new life ahead of her at university when she got home.

Jennifer's mother had died when she was very young, and Rob had raised her on his own. He'd not remarried. The way he told it, he and Jennifer had never found a woman they agreed on. So Jennifer had the combination of self-reliance and yet the essential loneliness of the only child. The big problem with her life right now, I'd quickly ascertained, was that she hadn't yet had a serious boyfriend. As painful as this was for Jennifer-she claimed she was the only girl in the western hemisphere who hadn't had a date for the prom-this state of affairs suited her father just fine, considering as he did all his daughter's potential suitors to be lascivious louts, to use his own words. After a couple of days sharing a room with Jennifer, I began to realize it was time I had a serious talk with her father, something along the lines of his reserving his interrogation and intimidation skills for the people he came across in his chosen line of work, rather than the young men who came calling on his daughter. It was not a conversation I was looking forward to, but what are friends for? And certainly Rob has never held back from telling me things about myself he feels I need to know.

The town lined the mouth of a river at the head of a large bay that provided snug harbor for the dozens of boats, large and small, moored there. We found Alex waiting for us at the end of the pier, aboard the Maire Malloy, a rather old and lumpy little wooden craft painted a dreadful pea green. The sea was perfect for sailing: a good stiff breeze, but not too much of one. The sky was clear in all directions, so it looked as if the weather would hold. Gulls squawked and wheeled after us as Alex started the engine and we put-putted out of the harbor, past fishing boats, large and small. When we cleared the edge of the harbor, Alex cut the engine and gave orders to hoist the sail. The wind ;aught us immediately, and appearances to the con-rary, the boat surged forward very nicely.

"Oohay!" Jennifer yelled. Sailing was a new expe-ience for her, and her excitement was contagious. I bund myself starting to enjoy myself, pushing the pic-ure of John Herlihy's black boot back to the further-nost corners of my mind.

"Oohay!" I agreed. From the sea, the land was even nore spectacularly beautiful: blue mountains in the dis-ance, cut by the enormous gashes of valleys, rolling ills that swooped down to sheer cliffs at the sea, far-tier out, the wild columns of spray where the sea met le shore. And everywhere, tiny isolated houses stark gainst the most extraordinary shades of green.

"Where to?" Alex called to us, the wind whipping is words away.

Jennifer shrugged. "Dnaleci," she shouted.

"I have a more practical idea," I called back.

It was relatively easy sailing, hugging the coast, past ttle bays and coves, some with houses visible, othersdeserted, others with the same derelict and abandoned houses we'd seen near Rose Cottage.

Few of the homes were as beautiful as Second Chance. From the water it was spectacular, the pale yellow of its walls in sharp contrast to the dark, dark green of the hills way behind it, and the well-manicured lawn and gardens sloping down to the sea. It looked like a little paradise, and even Jennifer, burdened very slightly by a late adolescent angst that had a tendency to show itself as chronic cynicism, looked impressed.

As we followed the coast past Second Chance, the wind whipped up, as it had when we'd hiked to Rose Cottage, and we had to tack several times to make headway. It was exhilarating, though, as the little boat crested the waves, then fell into the trough, the rugged shoreline, high cliffs at whose base the waves pounded and above which seabirds flew, receding off into the mist miles away. And high on the cliff, Alex's newly acquired cottage sat snugly facing out to sea. "Is that it, Uncle Alex?" Jennifer called out pointing toward the shore. "Oooo," she exclaimed, as Alex nodded proudly. "It's brilliant. Can I come and visit summers?"

"Of course you may," he replied.

The little wooden boat was still bobbing in the cove when we got there. Alex skillfully maneuvered our craft past some rocks and pulled alongside.

"I don't see anything," Jennifer said, peering into the Ocean Crest.

"We'll need to board her," I said.

"Be quick about it, Lara," Alex said as he pulled alongside. "It's time we were getting back," he added, pointing to the sun now dipping toward the horizon.

"Just give me a few minutes," I said, easing my way into the other boat. Once I was aboard, Alex shoved off and anchored several yards away.

I started at the stern and moved forward. I checked for wire or ropes over the side, thinking there might be a watertight package hidden in the water. I pulled the boat up to the buoy where it was moored, but found nothing there. I ran my fingers under the gunwales in case a tiny piece of paper had been stuck there. I checked the oar sockets and I felt under each seat, before moving toward the bow. I checked under that seat, too. Still nothing. Then I reached up into the prow of the boat, and came up empty again.

I was about to give up when I noticed that one of the boards in the bow looked freshly painted, in contrast to the rather worn quality of the rest of the boat. I gave the board a little tug and it came away to reveal a piece of white plastic sheet, part of a plastic bag, I'd have said, rolled up tightly and wedged into a grove between the boards, then taped to hold it in place.

"Got it," I yelled to Alex and Jennifer, slowly peeling away the tape, being careful not to tear the plastic or its contents.

"Yanpmoc!" Jennifer called out, waving her arms toward the shore. I looked up in the direction Jennifer was pointing. At the top of the cliff, round about where John Herlihy must have gone over, Conail O'Connor, son-in-law number two, stood, arms crossed, one leg propped up on a rock at the edge, looking down at us, like a bird of prey readying to strike. At that moment, I knew two things: One was that if looks could kill, I'd have keeled over right then and there. The other was that some people were taking this treasure hunt way too seriously.

"Let's get out of here," I called to Alex, who weighed anchor and navigated over to me. I stuffed theplastic roll in the back pocket of my jeans and scrambled on board the Maire Malloy. Alex started the little engine, and we slowly made our way out of the cove and into the wind.

The trip back to the harbor should have been a fast one. The wind was with us, and as soon as the sail was up our little boat leapt forward. The setting sun was to our right and behind us as we sped along.

We were about halfway back when a trawler, engines at a deep throaty roar, blasted out of the late afternoon shadow of the bay, heading directly for us. It was not a sleek boat, but it was a powerful one, its course bringing it inexorably closer and closer. "Come about," Alex yelled, as Jennifer and I ducked to avoid the boom, and scrambled to the opposite side. The other boat changed direction and continued to bear down on us. We were yelling and waving, trying to catch the attention of the driver, whom we couldn't see, before it was too late. At the last moment, Alex, an excellent sailor and remarkably calm in a crisis, did a quick maneuver, and the trawler, which was about to hit us broadside, instead just grazed the stern. It was enough, however, and, swamped, the Maire Malloy rolled over, hurling all of us overboard.

As we went over the side, I grabbed hold of Jennifer, but I hit the water so hard, I was dazed for a moment, and she was wrenched from my grasp. There was a roaring in my ears, either the shock of the water or the underwater sound of the powerboat, and my nose and mouth were filled with water as I was swept up in the wake. I struggled my way to the surface and looked about for the others. I saw Alex immediately, but Jennifer was nowhere to be found. A panic so intense it was almost a physical pain gripped me, and I started screaming her name and flailing around in the dark, cold water, desperate to find her, a glimpse of her purple jacket, or her blonde hair.

And suddenly there she was, first her head, then her shoulders, she rose coughing and sputtering, a few yards away. "Gip!" she gasped, shaking her fist at the departing trawler, already far away, a small black shadow retreating in the shimmering path of the sun on the water. "Mucs!" she yelled again, this time much stronger. I figured she was okay.

Together, we tried to right the boat, but it was difficult, exhausted as we were by our narrow escape, and in the end we just clung to the side of it, waiting until help arrived. It came mercifully soon in the person of Michael Davis who pulled alongside not long after in a small motorboat.

"I saw you from the cliff," he said after he'd hauled us all on board and attached a line to the sailboat to tow it to shore. "Bloody ijit driving that boat!" he exclaimed. "You could all have been killed!"

"Did you happen to see who the bloody ijit was?" I asked him, after I'd caught my breath.

"No," he replied, but he looked away as he said it. I had a feeling that even if he couldn't actually see, at that distance, who was driving the boat, he had a very good idea who was responsible. And recalling vividly the malignant look on Conail O'Connor's face, so, for that matter, did I.