Deed of Murder (16 page)

‘According to my junior friend, here, young Shane –’ Moylan bowed, almost overbalanced, straightened himself abruptly and glared at Aidan who had given a snort – ‘according to my friend, there were two or three droppings on one spot which we think showed that the horse stood for some time while the murdered man and
the unknown
stood and talked.’

‘Only one horse, we thought, Brehon,’ interrupted Aidan. ‘And that points to someone from the flax garden.’

‘Am I making this case or is it you?’ Moylan glared at his friend and added with heavy sarcasm, ‘Of course, if you think that you can . . .’

‘And then they struggled,’ said Shane rapidly. ‘You will see for yourself, Brehon.’

‘So it seems to me,’ said Moylan, hooking his thumbs under his armpits and inflating his chest, ‘that a struggle took place, resulting in a fatal blow by
the unknown
and then the deed was burned and the body tumbled down the hill. Gentlemen – and ladies, of course – I make the case that this unlawful killing of Eamon the lawyer was committed by one or both of the two people who benefited from the deed being seized and then destroyed. And here in the privacy of the schoolhouse with the door well guarded by our faithful dog, Bran, I put forward the names of either Cathal O’Halloran, the flax manager, or of his son, Owney.’

‘I see,’ said Mara. It was an obvious solution, but somehow she felt vaguely dissatisfied with it. There was one obvious flaw, but, as she could see by Shane’s eager face that he had spotted it, she said nothing but just smiled encouragement at him.

‘I hear what my learned friend has to say, but would put forward the objection that he has not accounted for Eamon the lawyer’s presence at the flax garden in the morning following his moonlit trip to O’Brien of Arra.’ The words burst from Shane’s lips.

Fiona flushed uncomfortably, but said coolly, ‘I’ve already told you that he went north when we left Arra.’

‘Instead of turning south and then crossing at O’Briensbridge; but that still doesn’t explain why he did that. You said yourself that you quarrelled over his decision so that makes it even more surprising that he didn’t give you a reason since he and you were such great friends.’ Shane’s voice was bland, and without the underlying note of innuendo which Moylan and Aidan would probably have inserted. He was young for his age in some ways, thought Mara, but his brain was sharp and he had put his finger on the most puzzling aspect of the matter.

‘You are absolutely sure, Fiona, that he gave no reason to go north, did he?’ asked Moylan, a note of disappointment in his voice.

Fiona shook her head. Her face had gone pale again and Mara intervened quickly.

‘I think that you made your case well, Moylan, and that the next step for us is to talk to Nuala and then we will make our way up to the flax gardens. So, Aidan and Fiona, will you fetch her now and don’t forget my note to the king, Aidan.’ The others were on their feet by now and she allowed them to go without further instructions. Regardless of the investigation into the murder, the first consideration now had to be the auction. No doubt the result would be the same. Muiris O’Hynes was considered to be a wealthy man and Cathal, no matter how hard he tried, was unlikely to be able to raise more than the two ounces of silver originally offered. Mara sighed, took a clean sheet of vellum from the wooden press, trimmed her pen with her knife, dipped it into the ink pot and began to write out a new deed of contract.

What would Cathal, his family, and his clan who depended upon him, do if Muiris won the contract? Go back to scratching a living from the salt marshes of his homeland? A place where the grass itself could be poisonous to the cattle that munched it. All those years of gaining knowledge and expertise in the growing of flax, the spinning of the fibres, the weaving, the dyeing – all wasted effort. Would a man kill to avoid all of this being taken from him?

Mara was forced to say yes to her own question.

Thirteen

Berrad Airechta

(Summary of Court Procedure)

‘
T
hat stick has blood on it – blood soaked into it,’ said Nuala sharply, eyeing it as Hugh held it under her nose.

‘That’s right.’ Hugh nodded happily. ‘So it’s the murder weapon, isn’t it?’

Nuala heaved an impatient sigh. ‘Don’t you boys ever listen,’ she said. ‘I told you. Eamon was killed by someone pressing on the thyroid cartilage. There was no blood – the fragile bones were cracked and the man died.’

‘But he had a scalp wound,’ said Moylan indignantly.

‘That was inflicted after death – probably tumbling down the mountain. There’s far too much blood on this stick – look at it carefully.’

‘Perhaps there was another murder!’ suggested Aidan with a hopeful note in his voice.

‘It’s strange though, Nuala, because I found this just at the place where there were marks of a struggle and also Shane found burned pieces of the deed of contract there in the same place.’

‘And droppings from a horse that had stood for a while,’ supplemented Shane.

‘I think we will have to leave the matter of the stick for the moment and get on our way – just leave it in the press in the schoolhouse, Moylan.’ Mara surveyed the well-filled twin satchels attached to the sides of each pony. The auction would be when the bell sounds for vespers. The boys would have to eat their lunch before then and she herself wanted to have plenty of time to survey the possible murder scene and to be able to turn matters over in her mind. Muiris, apparently, must already be at the flax garden. He had not been at home when Moylan went to carry the message and his household did not know where he was.

‘By the way, Mara, Seamus MacCraith will be joining us,’ said Nuala in a bored tone of voice. ‘The king and the others have gone for another day’s hunting and he doesn’t want to go. He’s afraid that if he does he will be forced to write a poem and “
the
subject does not offer any scope
”, or so he says. I tried to put him off but he wouldn’t be dissuaded. He said that he would hover at a distance.’

What a nuisance, thought Mara, but she said nothing. Fiona was blushing self-consciously and the boys were grinning. It was fairly obvious that they knew why Seamus MacCraith had not chosen to join the hunting party and was going to honour them with his presence. That was all very well and she was sure that Fiona could handle him, but today was a working day and Seamus would just be a nuisance. As soon as the poet arrived Mara drew her horse up beside his and suggested that he would work on his poem better if he kept at a distance from them.

‘In any case,’ she added, ‘all of my scholars are working on a case and Nuala, with her medical knowledge, is assisting us. I’m sure that you understand how work like this cannot go forward in the presence of a stranger – anything said at times like this has to be highly confidential. Perhaps you would like to go ahead of us now. Would that be best? Like that you can absorb the beauty of the mountain without our presence interrupting your thoughts.’

He stared haughtily at her and without a word spurred his horse and thundered across the stone-paved fields of the High Burren towards the lower slopes of the Aillwee Mountains. Nuala caught Mara’s eye with such a comical expression that Mara found herself biting her lips in order to suppress a laugh. No, she thought, that young man would not be right for Nuala, nor for Fiona, either. He might be intelligent, but he lacks a sense of humour. He, himself, and his sense of his own genius, would always be more important to him than any girl. Let him go ahead and admire the scenery.

And certainly the scenery was worth admiring. The day was warm but with a hint of crispness that seemed to forecast a frosty night. Between the clints, those massive slabs of stone that paved the fields of the High Burren, the early spring grass sprouted, looking fresh and appetizing for the cows that wandered over the firm surface. Here and there between the field boundaries a blackthorn bush had grown and the snow-white blossom gleamed in the noontime sunshine, rivalling in its intensity the almost silver gleam of the limestone slopes. The flowering season of the Burren was beginning and gradually, amidst the splendour of the glistening limestone, patches of colour showed themselves to the eye. The purple orchids dotted among pure white ones, azure clusters of bugle, mats of purple-flowered thyme and here and there a few early gentians, specks of intense blue, showed up between the creamy daisy-faced mountain avens flowers.

‘Do you miss this place when you are in Thomond?’ Mara almost regretted her question once it had been uttered, but Nuala showed no emotion, just glancing around at the mountains and distant view of the sea with a fairly indifferent face.

‘I never really think that much about it,’ she said. ‘I’ve so much to do. I suppose I am just focussed on my work.’

‘You always were,’ said Mara. ‘Even as a ten-year-old your dedication was there. That’s why I trust you implicitly when you tell me that the blood-soaked stick was not used in the murder of Eamon. But where did it come from?’

She expected no answer and got none. Nuala would only speak if she knew the answer and if the answer could be a scientifically proved fact. Mara clicked her heels against her horse and increased her speed until she drew level with her scholars.

‘Why should a bloodstained stick, that was not used on Eamon, be found at the place where we think the murder took place?’ She threw the question out and immediately five pairs of eyes were fastened to hers. ‘One answer from everyone.’

Moylan looked around. ‘I say that Nuala might be wrong and Eamon might have been hit on the head first and then punched in the bottom of the neck.’

‘Eamon wrestled it from the murderer and hit him with it, so the blood belongs to the murderer,’ came back Shane’s quick response.

‘’The stick has nothing to do with the case.’ Hugh sounded doubtful, but Mara gave him an approving nod.

‘What about the stick being left there as a false clue?’ asked Fiona.

‘Why?’ queried Moylan.

‘Use your brains,’ said Fiona crisply. ‘If we discover that Owney or Cathal, or any other obvious suspect does not have a stick, then our attention is immediately focussed on them. The blood could have come from anywhere – it could be from a butchered animal.’

‘Let’s think who would have a stick,’ said Aidan. ‘Would flax workers have sticks?’

‘Good point.’ Moylan nodded at his friend.

‘Could do, I suppose, to climb the mountain.’ Shane sounded doubtful.

‘Or to defend themselves against a wolf,’ suggested Hugh with a glance across the mountain where the shouts of the wolf hunters bounced against the echoing rocks.

‘Or against a bull, or even a ram,’ said Fiona. ‘The trouble is that most people will have a few or even a lot of these sticks – just like you have, Brehon, at Ballinalacken, just standing in a barrel in the guardsmen’s room.’

‘Still, we’ll bear it in mind, though, Brehon,’ said Moylan. ‘We might just notice someone asking about a missing stick.’

So will I, thought Mara, as they began to cross the fields at Baur North. Perhaps Fiona’s surmise about the stick being left as a false clue was the most interesting and most likely idea.

If, however, Shane was right then it should be easy to spot a man with a wound. Neither Cathal O’Halloran nor his son, Owney, would be able to hide a wound that had bled so much.

‘Look, the spring lambs are being taken up from Lissylisheen to the slopes of the Aillwee Mountain,’ shouted Shane, interrupting Mara’s thoughts.

‘The O’Lochlainn himself is with them, Brehon,’ said Moylan.

Mara smiled to herself. Moylan was taking his role as eldest scholar in the law school seriously. He was making sure that she knew of the presence of an important person and was ready to exchange greetings. Ardal O’Lochlainn, the O’Lochlainn, as the head of the clan was known, was probably the most important man in the kingdom of the Burren after Mara herself as representative of King Turlough Donn. In the centuries past the O’Lochlainns had been kings of the Burren, but now there was no more loyal subject of the king than Ardal, the present
taoiseach
or chieftain of the clan. He was a handsome man, tall, lean and athletic with those intensely blue eyes and his red-gold crown of hair and Mara gazed with pleasure at the picture he made on his beautiful thoroughbred strawberry mare.

‘You’re moving the lambs, Ardal,’ she called out. ‘Does that mean that you think the weather will be warming up?’

‘That’s right, Brehon. The wind is going around to the west. Might even be raining before dawn, I think. The grass is beginning to grow. I was up the mountain earlier and there are all sorts of herbs for the flock to eat. That reminds me, Brehon, I was looking very closely at the ground up there beyond the flax garden and I found this. I’m sure it must belong to you.’

Reining in his well-trained mare, Ardal bent down and picked something out of his satchel. It took him a moment to find the object and when he produced it Mara could see why. The object was no bigger than his little finger – just a scrap of pink linen tape, tied in a loop.

Moylan gave an exclamation, but Mara silenced him with a sharp look. She held out a hand and smiled graciously. ‘Thank you, Ardal,’ she said. ‘How clever of you to have spotted such a small object!’

‘I knew it must be yours.’ Ardal’s very white teeth flashed in a mischievous grin. ‘I remember when you were a little girl you told me how you had persuaded your father to get his linen document tape dyed pink, instead of black or white like other lawyers.’

‘That’s right.’ Mara returned his smile while, behind the polite mask of neighbourly friendliness, her mind was racing. How could a second piece of pink tape have been found at the very same place? She glanced at it. Yes, it definitely had come from Cahermacnaghten, but once again, the bow had not been tied in her characteristic knot. ‘Stand back, everyone,’ she said aloud, hoping to forestall any queries from her scholars. ‘Stand back and allow the O’Lochlainn to take his flock through the gap.’