by Erin Hart
Ward crossed the hall to his office and picked up the phone.
“I’d like to speak to the officer in charge of the murder.” The woman’s voice was smooth and educated, with a recognizable Dublin 4 drawl, but tentative. Ward guessed that she didn’t often ring the police about murder—or anything else, for that matter.
“This is Detective Liam Ward. I’m heading up the murder inquiries.”
“Inquiries?” Shock registered in the silence on the other end of the line. With one hand, Ward signaled to Maureen to pick up her extension. “Does that mean there’s more than one? I only heard about one on the television.”
“As of this morning there’s been a second murder. Are you calling with information?”
The woman’s tone was matter-of-fact. “I’m ringing to tell you that Desmond Quill’s alibi for Thursday evening is a lie.” Ward pictured her slender and fair, with expensive rings on her manicured fingers, but he could not see her face.
“And how do you happen to know this?”
“Because that Thursday chess game was something he and Laurence Fitzhugh cooked up years ago, the two of them, as a convenient cover for when they wanted to misbehave. Every week they work out who wins and who loses—plot every move, in fact, so that they can back each other up if that should be required. The game actually does take place, you see—not on a chessboard, but in their heads. I don’t know where Desmond Quill was that night. But I do know he wasn’t with Laurence Fitzhugh, because I was—as I have been every Thursday night for the past six and a half years.”
Ward wanted to believe the cool, anonymous voice. It could be a vital lead, but his inner skeptic made him pull back. “We appreciate your coming forward, but of course we’ll need to verify—”
She cut him off. “I haven’t come forward. I won’t give a formal statement, and I’ll certainly never testify in court. I have far too much to lose. I’m sure you understand, Detective Ward. And you needn’t bother tracing this call; I’m ringing from a telephone box. I just had a notion that you ought to know the truth.”
She rang off abruptly, leaving a loud, flat buzzing in his right ear. He looked up at Maureen, who was setting her receiver in its cradle. She made a face. “Worthless. Could be anyone, a crank, someone trying to take the pressure off Maguire.”
“But it is something new. We can ask the Bureau to follow up with Fitzhugh. Maguire can wait another few minutes downstairs; let’s head over to Coughlan’s, will we, and see if anyone can tell us exactly where Desmond Quill was at the time Rachel Briscoe was murdered.”
6
Coughlan’s Hotel was a small but very formal inn—directly across the square from the Garda station, but not the sort of place that would be happy to welcome police officers on duty, even if they were neighbors. Ward showed his identification at the front desk, careful to keep his voice low as he asked to speak to the manager on duty. A neat, middle-aged man in an expensive suit came out of a side office almost before the receptionist had set down the phone. He introduced himself as Noel Lavin, the general manager, and ushered them discreetly into his office. “Now, then, if you could tell me what the problem is, exactly…? And if there’s any way my staff can assist you, they certainly will.”
“We’re inquiring after one of your guests, Mr. Desmond Quill. We’d like to speak to the staff members who may have had some dealings with him.”
Lavin seemed to waver for a moment between his civic and moral duty to assist the Guards and his professional duty to maintain a screen of privacy and discretion for his paying guests. He smiled insincerely. “Is Mr. Quill in some sort of trouble? I assure you he’s done nothing here—”
“We’re just making some routine inquiries,” Ward said. “Which members of your staff would have had the most to do with him during his stay here?”
“The restaurant and bar staff, certainly. He took quite a few meals in his room, obviously. We were all shocked to hear about the murder. A dreadful thing, just dreadful and terribly, terribly sad.”
Ward proposed that Lavin should fetch the people they needed to see, and Lavin liked the idea. “Much more discreet that way, yes. Saves you from chasing all over the hotel…” Ward finished the thought in his own mind:…and letting the guests see you question the staff.
From the barman, Ward learned that Quill had gotten desperately drunk on Friday, the first day he was there, and that it had taken the barman and the night manager and two others to get him into his bed. The following day, Saturday, he’d spent more quietly. He’d stirred out for lunch in the hotel restaurant, but otherwise stayed in his room, ordering in drink—plenty of it.
The night manager backed up the barman’s story, saying Quill had spent most of the time in his room, drowning his sorrows. “At least I assume that’s what he was doing, from the amount of whiskey he ordered up. I check all the rooms before I turn in, and you could hear him in there, drunk as a lord and snoring his head off. You’d feel sorry for him, the poor sod.”
“What about the cleaners?” Ward asked Lavin. “I’m particularly interested in talking to the person who cleaned the room today.”
“You’ll be wanting Cara Daly, then. Only works at weekends, but she should still be here. I’ll see if I can find her for you.”
While he was gone, Ward sat and pondered the anonymous phone call. What did the woman on the other end of the phone have to lose if she came forward? It might have been just an elaborate decoy maneuver, an attempt to deflect attention from Maguire—and if that was the case, he was wasting time here. He was on the brink of packing it in when the door opened and Lavin returned with a slight, frightened-looking young woman with a puffy face and circles dark as bruises under her eyes. As she sat down in the leather armchair beside him, she crossed her thin legs and twisted them together, as if half afraid they would start moving of their own volition. Ward felt a twinge of guilt, knowing he didn’t have time to find out her story. Lavin, clearly nervous about leaving the girl in Ward’s care, started straightening the items on his desk and wouldn’t leave the room until Ward asked him to. What was he afraid the girl might say?
“I asked to speak to you, Cara, because according to Mr. Lavin, you cleaned Room Thirty-eight yesterday and this morning—the room where a guest named Desmond Quill is staying. Is that right?”
“I always clean Number Thirty-eight. It’s on my list. I meant to tell him, Mr. Lavin, about the room right away, but I forgot.”
“Tell him what, Cara?”
“There’s nobody in it today. Mr. Quill’s stuff is gone, all his clothes and shaving things.”
Ward felt a prick of apprehension, but he needed to know more, much more.
“Was Mr. Quill in the room when you were cleaning yesterday?”
“No, he was out.” The girl’s muscles went rigid and her hands clenched into fists. Her anxiety was contagious; Ward felt a tightening at the base of his throat.
“When you were cleaning the room, Cara, did you notice anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary?”
Her eyes flicked toward him suspiciously, and she licked her lips. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“You’re not in trouble. Just tell me what was unusual about Mr. Quill’s room.”
“I shouldn’t have touched anything. They could fire me for that.”
“No one is going to fire you, Cara. What did you see in Number Thirty-eight?”
“Didn’t see. Heard. I was tidying up the bedside table, and there was a tape recorder on it. I was just curious. I wanted to hear what kind of music he liked, the man in that room. He was nice; he left me a whole tenner the day before.”
“And what kind of music was it?”
“It wasn’t music at all.” She hesitated again, her hands and fingers twisting into elaborate knots in her lap. “It was just a whole lot of noise. Sounded like me dad, snoring.” Ward had been prepared for almost any answer but that. Snoring? Suddenly he heard the voice of the night manager, sitting in the same chair only a
few minutes earlier: You could hear him in there, drunk as a lord and snoring his head off.
A few minutes later, Lavin was letting him into Number 38, which as Cara Daly had reported, had been completely vacated. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” Lavin said, unable to imagine his venerable establishment tarnished by scandal. “He left a credit card number with us. I’m sure he’s going to come by the desk later to settle things up.”
Ward stood at the door and let his eyes sweep up and down the hallway, noting the glowing red EXIT sign at one end. He turned back to the hotel manager. “Supposing someone wanted to leave the hotel without going by the reception desk, without being seen. Is that the only other way out?”
“Well, yes,” Lavin said. “Although the door at ground level does lock so no one can get in from the street.”
“May I have a look?”
Lavin led the way to the fire exit at the end of the hall, and down the concrete stairwell that must have been added to the old hotel in the past few years. He pushed open the door at ground level, showing how the exit led into a narrow alleyway. There were no windows above, which meant there would be no one to witness comings and goings.
Ward crouched on his heels to examine the door more closely, and found that someone had taped the latch open. Desmond Quill could have come and gone at will without anyone seeing him.
7
Nora gradually regained her senses in darkness. Her eyes slid open, but there was nothing but impenetrable blackness before her; solid black, a total absence of light. The ringing in her ears and the throbbing pain radiating from the base of her skull told her she was still alive. Why? Was the killer just toying with her, saving her for later?
That grim prospect was enough to get her moving, despite the stiffness from lying in one position too long. It had been a couple of hours, anyway, judging by the way she felt. Propping herself up on one arm, she reached the other in front of her, feeling for surfaces, edges, shapes of recognizable objects. Her fingers closed around a long, round broom handle, a mop and bucket, two walls within reach. A closet, then. She was still in the cottage, in the broom closet under the stairs. She felt washed in relief, and drank in the mingled scents of cleaning liquid, dust, and lemon oil. She had been spared for some reason. That showed the killer wasn’t panicking, but proceeding according to plan. But what was that plan? Maybe it hadn’t been necessary to kill her, just to get her out of the way for a while.
But she had to get out of here. Climbing to her feet, she felt the door’s beaded lath; no handle on the inside. It wasn’t completely dark now; she could see a thin thread of light around the door. She tried to remember what the latch was like. A simple bar, if she recalled correctly. Depending on how the door frame was constructed, she might be able to lift it from inside, if she could find something to use as a tool. Even if he was here waiting for her when she escaped from the closet armed only with a mop, it was still better than just sitting there waiting for him to return.
Something thin, and strong enough to lift a latch. She set to work, down on her knees, methodically running her fingers over every object, leaving everything where it was, in case she needed it later. A strong wire might work, if only such a thing could be found. On the floor she found a box of rags; nothing in the bottom of the box. After a few minutes, she had examined and rejected every item. There must be something, something she hadn’t found, or something she could take apart to find the sort of flat tool she needed—
A noise came from the other side of the wall, and Nora froze in panic. She felt her skin flush with adrenaline, preparing for a fight. Maybe she should let him think she was still out—no, better to be ready as soon as anyone opened the door…. The scrabbling noises from outside continued, until she finally realized that it was just a pair of birds who’d built a nest under the eaves, arriving home and fluttering against the outside wall.
She relaxed a little, and her hand slid down the wall behind her, touching something she hadn’t felt before—a slight raised edge, a cold surface. She knelt and followed the edge, and prised up the flat piece of sheet metal from against the wall with her fingernails. Too big, probably, but worth a try. She’d have to be careful of the sharp edges. She felt around for a couple of rags and used them to lift the metal sheet. It seemed to be about eighteen inches long and eight inches wide; it might slip through the crack between the door and the jamb. She turned around in the cramped space and felt for the tiny crack, trying to remember how high off the ground the latch was, and hoping against hope that Gabriel and Evelyn had hired a carpenter who didn’t see any absolute need for square corners.
The thin sheet slid about a half-inch into the crack. She shoved it in another quarter inch, until she heard the distinctive sound of metal touching metal. Trying to keep a grip on her two makeshift handles, she wrestled the wobbling sheet downward, trying to find the bottom of the latch so that she could slip the metal under it and lift the bar. Her head still pounded dully, and beads of sweat were forming on her forehead and down the middle of her back. Let it work, she prayed fervently to whatever deity might be listening. All at once the metal sheet slid forward, and her shoulder bumped against the door. Now just to jimmy the sheet upward, and—
Nothing. The door didn’t budge, though the latch had lifted; she’d distinctly heard it click. Maybe something was blocking the door. She threw her shoulder against the stout wood and heaved with all her strength, but it wouldn’t move. She lifted the sheet metal higher—maybe the bar hadn’t quite cleared the latch. She joggled the flimsy metal up and down a few times, still pressing on the door, and all at once it burst open and sent her flying out onto the flag floor, sheet metal warbling and vibrating as it skidded across the stone.
After the deafening crash reverberated several times, the house was quiet. Nora lay still and listened, but heard nothing. Raising her head to look around, she saw that the house had been ransacked. The sitting area was in shambles, cushions tossed around, lamps broken, all of Cormac’s wine bottles and Evelyn’s beautiful crockery smashed. The floor was knee-deep in books that had been pulled from the shelves, as if someone had been searching the place in a frenzy.
Still jangling with fear, she went into the front hall to get the mobile from her jacket and tried ringing 999 with shaking fingers. The emergency operator’s voice kept cutting out, only half audible over the poor radio signal, and Nora knew her own voice was just as unintelligible. She hung up and tried again with no better luck; after the third failure she jammed the phone into her jeans pocket in frustration.
How had the attacker managed to get into the house? Both doors had been locked; she’d checked just after Cormac went off with the detectives. If someone could gain access to the house so easily, there was no protection in staying here. She could drive into town for the police. But what would she say? She hadn’t even seen the person who attacked her. She did have a nasty lump on her head, but even so, they might even think she was making it up, trying to draw suspicion away from Cormac. Think, Nora. Just clear your head and try to think, she told herself. There’s got to be something here, some clue to hold on to.
She checked the floor of the entryway. There was no sign of the envelope with her name; the attacker must have taken it. But the message it had contained was a triple-knotted cord. Was there something symbolic about those three knots, something she was missing? She remembered what Cormac had told Ward about a triple sacrifice making an offering more powerful. Danny Brazil had suffered a triple death. So had Ursula, and maybe Rachel, too. She put one hand to her own throat, and thought how simple it would have been for the assailant to slip the slender cord around her neck when she was unconscious, to cut her with the blade. For some reason she’d been spared. Maybe her death would have made one too many, disrupted the mysterious power of three. No, it was absurd even to think that way.
She looked into the sitting room, and amid all the jumble she saw the book into which she’d tucked the drawing of the collar. The book la
y sprawled open, its pages torn and crumpled. She stumbled through the debris and riffled through the pages; nothing inside. Whoever attacked her had been after the drawing—had probably watched her hide it. She might just as well have opened the door and let him in.
But the killer had shown his hand by going after the drawing. It was the one thing that definitely linked Danny Brazil’s death with Ursula Downes. Rachel Briscoe might just have become an unfortunate liability, if she’d seen someone at Ursula’s house the night of the murder—or perhaps there was some other reason she’d been singled out. Loughnabrone…It suddenly struck Nora that last night the lake’s poetic name had become literally true. She didn’t even have to close her eyes to imagine Rachel Briscoe’s pale form pitching forward in the moonlight, helpless and alone as her blood mingled with the water. What desperate need had required so terrible a sacrifice? She felt a clench of regret and felt hot tears come to her eyes, reliving those fleeting moments in the car the other day, remembering the defensive pitch of Rachel’s dark eyebrows, her self-protective posture, and most of all the naked confusion and anger in the girl’s face. She should have made an effort, done something more. What good did it do now, wiping away useless tears when they were too late? Stop it, stop it, said the voice in her head. Stop beating yourself up and think about the drawing.
It had come from Charlie Brazil’s shed. He must have known that Ursula had taken it. Nora thought of Charlie’s hands around her ankle, his own triple-knotted necklace, how terrified she had felt when he mentioned Ursula’s interest in the significance of the three knots.
If Charlie was involved, it was possible that he wasn’t acting alone. What if dealing in stolen antiquities had been a family endeavor, the thing that had gotten Danny Brazil killed? It could be that Charlie was acting on his father’s behalf. Ursula might have found out what they were up to, and threatened to expose them.
