by Erin Hart
Quill’s words came back to her like an echo. Haven’t you ever wanted something so much, Dr. Gavin, that you were willing to do anything to get it? She’d assumed he was talking about the collar, but perhaps he had meant something else as well. It suddenly came to her what Quill had meant out on the bog about Evelyn McCrossan being careless, leaving a key where anyone could find it. A shiver slid down her spine.
The front doorbell sounded, and Nora instinctively shoved the picture back in the box and put the lid on. She checked the small diamond-shaped window and saw Liam Ward standing outside the cottage door, head bent, his expression thoughtful.
“Good evening, Dr. Gavin. Sorry to be disturbing you again—”
“Not at all. Please come in, Detective.” Cormac was just coming down the stairs.
“Good, I’m glad you’re both here,” Ward said. “I have a bit of official business, one last question, if you have a minute.”
Nora was about to show Ward into the sitting room when Cormac’s mobile sounded. He looked at the number and said, “Sorry, I should take this.” He headed back upstairs, and they could hear him answer. “Hello, Mrs. Foyle. Is everything all right?” Geraldine Foyle was the neighbor Cormac had asked to check on his father from time to time, at the house up in Donegal—something that had proved a source of tension with his father several times before. Nora hoped it wasn’t something more serious this time.
She led Ward into the sitting room, where they settled in a couple of chairs near the fire, but the policeman seemed somewhat ill at ease. Nora studied his ever-present olive raincoat, the slender wrists and hands that emerged from the sleeves, the long nose and soft brown eyes, the wiry salt-and-pepper hair. This was a man who projected an air of gentleness, and Nora wondered again what had pulled him into police work. No doubt the same thing that drove her and countless others: intense curiosity, a need to know, to learn, to connect the dots—though now it seemed to her that the more you actually learned, the less it was possible to understand.
“I’ve just come from Michael Scully’s,” Ward said. “He said you’d be taking him to the hospital to see Brona in a while. I wanted to thank you for that, and for everything you’ve done.”
“It’s nothing. We’re happy to do it. You said you have one last question, but I hope you don’t mind if I have a few as well. I’ve been trying to work out how everything fits. Nothing is straightforward, is it? It all seems tangled up. How do you begin to unravel it?”
“Like untying a knot, I suppose; one thread at a time.”
“How do you know when to stop?”
“In my case, it’s usually not a matter of choice. Other cases begin pressing, and eventually the old ones have to be abandoned. It’s got to be that way; otherwise there would be no end. Not what you wanted to hear, is it?”
“No, but I understand. That’s the way it happens.”
Cormac rejoined them wearing a worried expression.
“Is everything all right?” Nora asked.
“It’s nothing urgent. I can tell you later,” he said. “Carry on.”
“I was just going to tell you that we found a lot of interesting material in Desmond Quill’s house in Dublin, including keys to a lockup that was filled with artifacts—mainly Iron Age, from what the experts are telling us. There were also detailed records showing that he’d been doing a great business in stolen antiquities, items nicked from museums. No one even knew they were missing. In addition to the items he’d sold, there were hundreds more he’d apparently kept for himself, all cataloged and documented. Quill was working for the National Museum at the time of the Loughnabrone hoard, overseeing conservation of items from the hoard. He would have had contact with the Brazils, working out here.”
“And they showed him drawings of the things they’d found,” Nora said. “Things they hadn’t handed over to the museum. Can you imagine someone like Quill, only able to see a drawing of that collar, one of the most magnificent archaeological finds in the last fifty years? It must have driven him nearly mad. You said his obsession was Iron Age artifacts?”
“There are a few items from other periods, but that seems to have been his particular fancy. All the items he’d kept were Iron Age, give or take a century.”
“That may be one reason he was so interested in the whole idea of triple death,” Nora said. “He tried to explain to me how he saw bloodletting and sacrifice as spiritual, as though he was giving Ursula and Rachel and Dominic Brazil something greater by killing them. He talked about the astonishing beauty of blood.”
Ward said, “We found at least a half-dozen ceremonial bronze daggers in the lockup, like the one he used on Dominic Brazil, and probably on the other victims as well.”
“One thing I don’t understand,” Nora said, “is why the Brazils would try to sell the collar in the first place. Why wouldn’t they be satisfied with a reward? Even if it was only a fraction of what the collar was worth, it would have been more money than they were ever likely to see in their lifetimes.”
“But to qualify for it,” Cormac said, “they’d have had to prove that they had acquired the collar legally, legitimately. The minute they moved it from the findspot, the provenance became suspect, and their claim would most likely be rendered invalid. Under the treasure-trove laws, the state could have seized the collar, and the Brazils wouldn’t have seen a penny of any reward. Quill was probably smart enough to make it seem as though their best choice was to turn it over to him.”
“And it’s easy for us to sit here and analyze after the fact. Situations like that only seem simple from the outside,” Ward said. “Mistrust is a very corrosive force, especially among three people. If Quill set the Brazils against each other, he knew exactly what he was doing. He probably hoped for a betrayal of some kind; he just didn’t anticipate that he would end up without the collar.”
“Here’s something I don’t understand,” Cormac said. “Why did Quill wait so long to try to find the collar? Danny Brazil disappeared twenty-six years ago. If Quill didn’t believe Danny went off on his own, why would he not try to find him, prove that he never went anywhere?”
Ward said, “I imagine he did try to trace Danny, and came up empty. He probably even suspected that Dominic had done away with his brother, but without a body or some evidence of foul play, there was no way he could prove anything.”
Nora said, “But from what Quill said out on the bog, it sounded as if he’d kept pressure on Dominic Brazil all these years. Dominic never broke, because he didn’t know where the collar was. But Quill didn’t know that for certain. He couldn’t risk killing the person who was his only possible lead. But when Danny Brazil turned up, Quill knew exactly who was responsible. He must have heard enough about Danny’s body to assume it was a triple death, and he made sure that his victims’ wounds matched Danny’s—maybe to throw you off, or maybe because he felt some attraction to the method, some connection to the idea of sacrifice. I think in some strange way, it pleased him to see the ritual angle being pursued.”
“All of this was buried for so long. What opened it up again?” Cormac asked.
“I suppose you could think of Ursula as the catalyst,” Nora said. “When Danny Brazil’s body turned up, she started investigating rumors about gold in the Loughnabrone hoard, and eventually she found the drawing. She knew it was a key to finding the collar, but she needed Quill’s help to decipher it.”
“The map wouldn’t make sense to anyone who didn’t know the area,” Ward said, “but to someone who’d been here dozens of times, as Quill had, it made perfect sense. He could see the lakeshore and the nine hives, and the inscription provided another clue. The bees made a nice protective shield. Who would think to look underneath a hive?”
Cormac pulled at his ear, puzzled. “I understand the whole connection between Quill and the Brazils, but what I can’t understand is how Ursula managed to figure it out.”
“Sometimes it’s just a tiny thing,” said Nora. “Ursula must have seen the same
photograph that I saw hanging in Owen Cadogan’s office, showing the Brazils with their discovery. Desmond Quill was in the picture too; you couldn’t see his face, but he was wearing a tiepin that he still wore all these years later—a pretty distinctive triskelion. It took me a while to put my finger on where I’d seen it before. Once you start thinking about it, Quill is quite recognizable in the picture—something in the way he holds himself, that upright bearing. I can’t explain it beyond that, really.” It remained a small twist of fate, she thought, a mystery that would probably never be solved. She turned her attention to Ward. “No word on Teresa Brazil?”
“No, not a word,” Ward said. “No body turned up in the Brazil house, as you’ve probably heard by now. It’s as if she vanished into the air. The fire investigators tell me all the oxygen tanks and the gas taps on the cooker had been left open. All it took was one spark from the oil burner to set it off. Have you ever seen the aftermath of a gas explosion? The house was completely leveled. Nothing left.”
Nora had not mentioned to anyone how the explosion had transformed the sequence of events—how Quill’s attention turning to the Brazils’ house as it was blown to bits had given her one last chance to fight back. Or how the resulting conflagration had brought the fire brigade so quickly, and ultimately saved Brona’s life. All that, and more besides, they owed to Teresa Brazil. She had saved them both by destroying the lie she had lived for so long. Nora imagined her leaving the house, pulling the door shut to the hiss of gas escaping.
“Will you be staying the rest of the summer, then?” Ward asked.
Nora looked over at Cormac before answering. “That’s another thing we wanted to mention. I’m headed back to Dublin tomorrow, for the postmortem on the Loughnabrone bog man.”
“What is it you hope to find out from him?” Ward asked. He sounded genuinely curious.
“We look for a rough date and cause of death, any pathologies, and explanations for anything that does turn up. For my own research, I’m looking for a better understanding of what happens to preserve a body in a bog. We may be able to analyze his stomach contents, and that can tell us a lot about his diet and about social conditions at the time. I’m sure he’ll stir up a whole chorus of new debate about sacrifice. We look for all the same things you look for in investigating a crime, I suppose—who and how, but most of all why. It all comes down to human motivation in the end.”
“And what about you, Dr. Maguire? Is that your sort of thing as well?”
Cormac’s face darkened, and he glanced at Nora. “Normally it would be, but I won’t be able to go. I’ve just had a call from the woman who looks in on my father. She says he’s not doing very well at the moment, so I’m heading up there tomorrow. I’m sorry, Nora.”
Ward put his hands on his knees and stood up, his curly head nearly touching the low ceiling. “I’d better be off.”
He lifted his raincoat from the chair and turned toward the door, but Nora stopped him.
“Did we answer your question, Detective Ward? When you arrived you said you had a question for us.”
“Oh, yes—I almost forgot. It’s this,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out a small black-and-white photograph, which he showed to each of them in turn. The picture showed a dark-eyed young woman in a peasant blouse. She was looking back at the camera over her left shoulder, and her eyes held the photographer in a frank and playful gaze. The immediate impression was one of luminous youth and startling intimacy. “Do either of you recognize this woman?” Ward asked.
“Yes, of course,” Cormac said. “I’m surprised you don’t know her yourself. It’s Evelyn McCrossan, the woman who owns this house. It’s an old photograph, though. She’s over sixty now.”
“The name on the back here is Evelyn Fitzgerald.”
“That was her family name, before she married,” Cormac said. “Where did you get this picture?”
“From a locked drawer in a desk at Desmond Quill’s house in Dublin. There were nearly a hundred photographs of the same woman—some taken a long time ago, like this one, and dozens taken more recently. Some were dated in the past few months.” The chill that had fingered Nora’s spine returned. Ward asked, “Any idea why Quill was so interested in Evelyn McCrossan?”
“Not a clue,” Cormac said, and Nora could only shake her head. One photograph in a jumble didn’t mean anything. Her heart fluttered as she spoke. “I suppose it wouldn’t be too startling if Quill knew Gabriel and Evelyn. He was an archaeologist years ago, and worked at the National Museum; I’m sure he and Gabriel were probably acquainted from way back. And if that was the case, he couldn’t help knowing Evelyn as well.”
“You can always ring me if you think of anything further,” Ward said. “When a suspect dies before the whole case is resolved, there are always these questions without answers. I do appreciate your time.”
As soon as Ward had gone, Nora went to the sideboard, to the box where she’d hidden the photograph of Quill with the McCrossans. She turned it over and read the inscription: Desmond, Evelyn, and Gabriel, Loughnabrone, 1967. She held it out to Cormac. “I found this photograph of the three of them this morning,” she said. “What year were Gabriel and Evelyn married?”
“I think about 1969 or ’70. I’m not exactly sure.”
“But they weren’t married when this picture was taken?”
“No, definitely not.” The question hung between them, unasked, unanswered.
“If they knew each other, I wonder why Gabriel never mentioned Quill. Maybe they parted ways, had a falling out.”
“Over Evelyn?”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
Nora studied the grainy faces in the photo. Did the atmosphere seem strained somehow, as if the two men were vying for the affections of the beautiful girl who sat between them? Quill’s arm snaked up behind Evelyn’s back on the snug cushion—a proprietary gesture. But how could you see the nuances of relationships in a snapshot, a fleeting moment frozen in time? They knew who had ultimately won Evelyn’s affections, and it was not Desmond Quill.
Nora said, “If Quill was interested in Evelyn, then some of the things he said to Dominic Brazil down at the lake—things about losing a treasure worth more than gold—make a lot more sense. Maybe he felt he deserved the collar, as compensation or reparation for some slight he’d suffered. Rejection by Evelyn would be one explanation.”
“Jesus, poor Evelyn. I’m sure she’d no notion about any of this.”
“Now that Quill is dead, surely it’s all over.” Nora slipped the photograph from Cormac’s hand; before he could object she had lit a match under it and cast it into the ashes in the fireplace. She watched the edges curl and blacken. The last fragment of the image to disappear was Desmond Quill’s smiling face. With any luck, Evelyn might be spared the anguish of being Quill’s final, posthumous victim.
2
Cormac dropped Michael Scully and Nora at the hospital’s front entrance, and Nora stood by anxiously as Michael climbed out of the passenger seat. He moved slowly, but she wasn’t sure how much assistance to give, and didn’t know whether he might be offended by the offer of a wheelchair. When they’d made it through the sliding doors into the hospital foyer, Scully turned to her and tipped his head toward several wheelchairs that stood waiting just inside the entrance. “I think it may be a good idea to take a lift in one of those,” he said, “if you wouldn’t mind.”
She went to fetch one of the wheelchairs, and Michael sank into it, exhausted, though he’d walked only about thirty yards from the car. Taking her place behind the chair, Nora looked down at his thin shoulders moving up and down from the effort of breathing, his face showing the weariness of constant pain. His hands gripped the wheelchair’s arms, and she saw the veins standing out between the tendons. They would probably not meet again, after she left this place.
As they approached Brona’s room, Michael Scully raised a hand for Nora to stop the wheelchair outside the door. He looked in at his dau
ghter, asleep in the bed, her injured throat still swathed in bandages. Brona had lost quite a lot of blood by the time they got her to the hospital, so her condition had been critical for the first couple of days, but she seemed to have suffered no brain damage from oxygen deprivation. In the past several days she was much improved, and yesterday they’d found her sitting up in bed. She would probably have a scar, but by some miracle Quill’s blade had missed the major vessels in her throat.
“Let her be,” Scully said. “I can wait a few minutes to see her.” Nora turned the chair around, and they went back down the hospital corridor in silence.
Scully finally spoke. “I’ve been thinking. There’s not much more I could do for Brona, even if I were going to be here. She’ll have to make her own decisions. But I want to be sure that she can make up her own mind, and not have others trying to do it for her.”
“I’m sorry that we have to go away tomorrow,” Nora said. “How will you manage your doctor visits?”
“I’ll drive myself as long as I can, and when she’s recovered, Brona can drive me, if I’m not able.” He looked at Nora’s startled expression. “Oh, yes, she has a driving license, and a Leaving Cert. She’s a very capable, independent young woman. But you can see the kinds of preconceived notions she faces, even from people like yourself.”
“I shouldn’t have assumed—”
“Nearly everyone does,” Scully said. “No harm done.”
“I’m curious about how you communicate—or I suppose a better question would be how Brona communicates with you. How does she tell you what she feels, what she needs?”
“You’d be amazed what can pass between two people without a word being spoken,” Scully said. “I’m not saying it isn’t difficult, but we’ve always managed. Even people who speak have trouble making themselves understood.”
