Deed of Murder (7 page)

Brigid looked meaningfully at Mara and then, as if she feared she was saying too much, she backed away and went out of the small house.

‘I wanted to talk to you about this injury,’ said Nuala as soon Brigid had gone out and shut the door behind her. ‘It’s a bit difficult to explain –’ she frowned thoughtfully – ‘it’s not something that I have been taught exactly but I noticed it first a few years ago when father was called to a farm to attend to a man who had been gored by a bull, though he was dead by the time that we arrived. The wife of the farmer had sent someone for Malachy and I went along with him. I suppose I was only about twelve at the time,’ said fifteen-year-old Nuala and Mara smiled briefly, remembering the long-legged, dark-eyed child lugging around the heavy leather medical bag belonging to her grandfather.

‘The bull was still in the field and the farm workers could not get it away from the body for quite a while. I saw the animal toss the poor man again and again, until eventually they managed to drive it away and lock it up. But – and this is the strange thing – although the man had been gored again and again, there were gouged out places all over his body, but only one of these holes seemed to have bled much. I remember asking father whether blood didn’t gush out after someone is dead – he said he didn’t know – that’s what he usually said to me. But from then on I kept an eye on dead bodies and I even did a little experiment with one by cutting a vein when no one was around and that proved to me that, after death, blood doesn’t really flow. And I also found out that the longer after death the cut occurs, the less blood there is.’

Mara looked at her attentively. Nuala was a true professional. She had a huge admiration for the girl patiently experimenting with no help given to her by her strange father, Malachy O’Davoren.

‘Why I’m telling you this is because I know you have to find out what happened to Eamon,’ continued Nuala. ‘I think that someone killed him.’ Once again she pulled down the cloak and showed the terrible bruise at the base of the neck. ‘This injury killed him, I think. The thyroid cartilage here is one of the spots that is most vulnerable. Someone pressed their thumbs in here and strangled him.’

Not Fiona, then. Mara breathed a sigh of relief. Surely a girl as small as Fiona would not have the strength to do that to a young man like Eamon. ‘Would it be difficult to do this?’ she asked.

‘Not terribly,’ said Nuala indifferently. ‘You’d have to know what you were doing, of course. Or else be lucky enough to find the right spot instantly. He would have lost consciousness almost immediately. But,’ she said emphatically, ‘this is the interesting bit. He fell down the mountainside, as we know. He bounced from rock to rock, you can see the marks. And look, here on the scalp, you can see the fall has actually smashed the skull at this point. Come around here to the head.’ Nuala parted the dark hair and showed the depression.

‘But you don’t think that was what killed him?’

‘No, not at all. I’m certain of that. In fact, I think that he was dead before he fell down the mountainside.’

‘What!’

‘That’s right. You see if he hadn’t been dead for a while when this happened the scalp would have poured blood. Scalp wounds bleed more than any other injuries. You’ve probably seen that for yourself if any of the boys got a scalp cut from a hurley or something.’

Mara nodded. ‘They even frighten themselves the first time they see all that blood.’ Her mind went back to Eamon. ‘So you don’t think that he was killed at that spot just beside the flax garden then? So how did he fall and why was that done?’

Nuala shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘I’d say that someone did not want the body to be found where he had been killed. Probably wanted to pretend that it was just an accident.’ She went across the room, picked up her medical bag, checked its contents, looked around the room and then went to the door.

‘I’ll leave you now,’ she said. ‘I want to have a look at my property in Rathborney. Ardal has put a man in there to manage it for me. I’m hoping that when I qualify as a physician next year I will be allowed to live there, even if I can’t find a husband for myself by then. I suppose you haven’t managed to find one for me yet, have you?’

With a dry laugh she went out without waiting for a reply. Mara would not have known what to say, in any case. There was only one man that Nuala wanted – had always wanted – and that was Fachtnan, the nineteen-year-old scholar at Cahermacnaghten law school.

Fachtnan had failed his final examination last year. Mara hoped that he would pass it this year, but Fachtnan had serious memory problems and it was hard to predict how he might react in an examination situation. If he passed then he could earn a living as a lawyer, but if he failed once more, he had another possibility in front of him. If he married Nuala, it would be ‘union of man on a woman’s property’, but he would lack for nothing. Nuala had been left a rich estate at Rathborney and in addition she would have her work as a physician. Even as a young girl the people of the Burren had trusted her more than they trusted her father, Malachy, and had sought her advice and used her medicines with confidence.

But Fachtnan was deeply in love with Fiona. Nuala knew that, and it was probably the reason why she had not stayed to see the arrival of the scholars. She could not bear to see Fachtnan and Fiona together, especially now that Eamon had been removed as an obstacle.

I must talk to Fachtnan, thought Mara. Tell him the truth. Tell him that Fiona has no real interest in him. Try to probe, delicately, his feelings for Nuala. He had been fond of her for years. She would play the matchmaker; a dangerous game, perhaps, but she was sure that Nuala and Fachtnan would be happy together.

But when the scholars arrived, there was no sign of Fachtnan. Mara had gone to the gate of Cahermacnaghten to welcome them, had heard their voices calling greetings to some farmer from a long way off. There they were, Moylan and Aidan in the front, then Hugh and Shane, and Fiona riding rather soberly behind them.

‘Where is Fachtnan?’ she asked as they came close and they looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

‘I thought he was here, Brehon,’ said Moylan.

‘Not at Ballinalacken,’ said Aidan. ‘Not unless he’s in the eagle’s nest. Did you know that there’s a golden eagle nesting just above the castle, Brehon?’

‘Shut up,’ muttered Moylan.

‘Oh, I forgot.’ Aidan crimsoned with embarrassment and the two younger boys blushed in sympathy with him. It would be all quite unreal to them that one of their own who had eaten and slept beside them for the last couple of weeks was now lying dead.

‘I’d like you all to leave your horses and ponies here for the moment and go across to the fields and gather some flowers – there are tons of early orchids out and I think it would be nice to put them in the coffin,’ said Mara. Her quick ear had caught the sound of a heavy cart coming trundling up the road. That would be Blár with the coffin. She had not reckoned on Fiona’s presence, thinking that she would have been too upset to come. She did not want the girl to see Eamon, who had loved her, lying dead on the table in her house.

‘Make sure that you get a very big bunch. I’ll call you when Eamon has been coffined and then we’ll walk with the coffin down to the church. Father O’Connor will receive the body and he will be buried tomorrow morning.’

The walk down to Noughaval Church had been a silent affair. The scholars had prayed with sincerity in the church, joining in the priest’s prayers for eternal rest to be granted to the young man whom they had known so well for a short time.

When they emerged from the church Fiona was shivering and the two younger boys looked pale. Mara looked at them with understanding. It was an age when they felt eternal and now they had had a shock when one of their companions had been killed.

‘One thing that we can do for Eamon, now, is to find out who killed him and make that person pay,’ she said, making her voice as matter-of-fact as she could. Beside her, she heard Fiona take in a deep breath, but no more was said until they returned to the law school.

Somehow everything was better then. This was the place where legal questions were debated and the familiarity of the well-worn desks, the wooden press full of law books and scrolls, the board on the wall, regularly whitewashed by Cumhal, with its ledge beneath for the charcoal sticks and the damp sponge – all of these familiar objects seemed to settle the scholars into a steady, though sombre, frame of mind.

‘Nuala feels that Eamon was dead, perhaps for as long as an hour, before his body was hurled over the side of the cliff below the flax garden,’ began Mara and she outlined Nuala’s reasoning to them, watching the heads nod with comprehension. The Cahermacnaghten scholars knew Nuala well and respected her learning.

‘Why did you leave him, Fiona?’ asked Shane curiously.

Fiona hesitated for a moment, colour rushing into her pale face, and then she said uncertainly, ‘He started to . . . I . . .’

‘Anything to do with Heptad forty-seven?’ asked Moylan delicately, assuming the airs of a man of the world, while Aidan blushed for his friend.

‘Heptad forty-seven? What’s that?’ murmured Hugh to Shane, who rapidly licked his finger, looked directly ahead at Mara in an attentive manner while writing RAPE in damp letters on to his desk.

‘Nothing like that,’ assured Fiona with the ghost of a smile.

‘You should read
Bretha Nemed toisech
, my lad,’ said Moylan to Hugh in an undertone. ‘Essential reading for a boy of your age! Would make your hair stand on end. Full honour price penalty if a woman is kissed against her will! Read
Cáin Adomnain
, too. Ten ounces of silver for touching . . .’

‘That’s enough, Moylan,’ said Mara, but she was grateful to him for lightening the atmosphere. Fiona was laughing in a natural manner and she began to explain to the boys about Eamon going north and how she turned back and left him.

‘And the deed had definitely been signed by then?’ asked Aidan.

‘Definitely,’ said Fiona. ‘I asked him and he took it out and showed it to me.’

‘Did he unroll it?’ asked Shane sharply and then before Fiona could reply, he said quickly, ‘Think, Fiona, do it step by step. He opened his satchel . . .’

‘He opened his satchel,’ repeated Fiona obediently, ‘and he unrolled it and—’

‘But wasn’t it tied?’ interrupted Shane. ‘Did he untie it, or did he slide it out of the loop?’

‘Yes, you’re right; it was tied.’ Fiona shut her eyes and sucked in her lips with concentration. ‘He slid the tape off it,’ she said suddenly and opened her eyes and blinked at Shane’s air of triumph. ‘Is that important?’ she asked in a puzzled way.

‘Shane found the linen ribbon,’ said Hugh. ‘It was on the path above the flax garden.’

‘The path coming from the north,’ supplemented Aidan.

‘Still tied in a loop,’ said Shane.

‘So,’ said Moylan slowly, ‘the murderer, be it a he, or a she . . .’

‘You needn’t look at me,’ said Fiona tartly. ‘I was nowhere near the flax garden today. In any case, if I went around murdering everyone who tried to kiss me, the place would be littered with dead bodies.’ She looked meaningfully at Moylan, who blushed a bright scarlet.

‘Never mind all that, now,’ said Mara taking pity on him. ‘Shane has uncovered an interesting point. If Eamon definitely had the deed in his satchel when Fiona parted from him, then the deed was either lost or stolen.’

‘Why steal the deed?’ asked Hugh in a puzzled voice.

‘Because now there is no deed! The auction has to be held again.’ Shane sounded triumphant and Mara looked at him with respect. He was only twelve, but with his sharp brain and excellent memory he might be one of her top scholars by the time that he was seventeen or eighteen. ‘This puts Cathal the flax manager as a prime suspect, doesn’t it, Brehon?’

‘May I write on the board, Brehon?’ Hugh looked pleading and Mara nodded. Hugh had excellent handwriting, was a hard-working, well-behaved boy, but he was a problem, nevertheless. His mother had died two years ago of the sweating sickness, and for a while she had thought this might be the problem with his work. But now she was beginning to worry as to whether he had the brains to qualify in five years’ time. And if not, would it be kinder to inform his father, the silversmith, at the end of this year and allow the boy to follow his father’s trade? However, that was a matter which could wait. In the meantime, this murder had to be solved, so she turned her mind back to the problem of Eamon and the missing deed.

‘Put up the headings, Hugh,’ called out Aidan. ‘Reasons to murder . . .’

‘Fear, anger, gain, revenge,’ said Shane.

‘Remember Heptad forty-seven,’ murmured Moylan.

‘That would be covered by “anger”,’ said Shane placidly and Fiona laughed.

‘Or revenge,’ said Hugh wisely. ‘That’s if he managed . . .’

‘Can’t think of anyone for “fear”. That’s usually when someone is being blackmailed. Did Eamon know any terrible secrets?’ asked Aidan.

‘Doubt it,’ said Moylan. ‘He was such a . . . well, I think if he did know any secrets he would not have been able to stop himself from hinting at it. Anyway he hasn’t been here for very long.’

‘But if the deed is missing and the auction has to be held again, then Cathal’s name will have to go next to “gain”. Does everyone agree?’ Shane looked around at his fellow scholars.

‘I think that if you are being fair you should put my name beside “anger”,’ said Fiona. ‘I was very angry with him.’ Her eyes filled with tears for a moment and the others looked away.

‘And Fachtnan,’ said Hugh innocently. ‘He might have been very angry if he saw you leave with Eamon.’ The other three boys looked at each other uneasily and then surreptitiously at Fiona. Hugh wrote up FACHTNAN beside FIONA and then turned back to look at his fellow scholars.

‘And Owney, Cathal’s son,’ said Moylan hurriedly. ‘He’s supposed to be getting married this summer. Do you remember that girl that he was with last Halloween? The daughter of the woman who sells linen at the fairs, do you remember her? He might not have been able to afford it. Marriage is expensive . . .’ He trailed off, looking uneasily at Fiona who was staring at the desk.