The Celtic Riddle Page 26

  “And Deirdre?”

  “She lost her nerve, that’s all. She was going to tell you. Unfortunate that I involved her at all, but I had to, you see. I needed someone at Second Chance, so that I could manipulate the strings from far away in Dublin, unsuspected, but still have the information I needed about what was happening there. I sent her back, although she didn’t want to go. I wanted her to wreak some more havoc—I thought her statement to police about Conail was inspired, don’t you?—and also to keep her eye on you, after your rather insistent questioning of me when you came to Dublin. I made her call me from town every night to report, and so that I could bolster her resolve and keep her anger at the family stoked. But then one evening she didn’t call, and I knew what that meant, although I didn’t know why.”

  “Because Eithne Byrne told Deirdre how grateful they were she’d come back and promised to look after her.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “After I got back to Dublin with Ryan, I turned around and drove much of the night to get there before she could do anything, then all the way back to Dublin to be at my office at the usual time. You know, I thought that because she had suffered too, like me, she must want, no need, revenge, that she was the perfect ally, but she hadn’t the stomach for it.”

  I thought of how Deirdre had tried to warn me off, right at the start, out there on the road in the rain. She’d known what would happen to anyone who persisted in looking for the treasure. Charles was right: she hadn’t the stomach for what he planned to do.

  “Hated to do it, really, to kill her, I mean, but I’d come this far,” he went on. “She’d had a hard life. Death might be a blessing for her.” He paused for a moment or two, but his eyes never left my face.

  “It’s important to me that you understand that I do not kill casually or without reason,” he said, suddenly. “In fact, I have gone to some lengths to avoid it. I am not a monster. I locked you and your friend up in the clochán to give me time to find the treasure, as you call it, before you did. But you moved too fast. If I had found it and left before you were able to get here, I would have made an anonymous call to the police and they would have sent someone to release you. There would be no need for this,” he said, waving the gun in my direction. “The family could look for the treasure forever, as far as I was concerned, as long as there was absolutely no chance they would find it. And now, of course, they won’t.”

  “So are you going to look at it?” I said.

  He looked startled. “The treasure, you mean? I suppose so. It was never about the treasure, but now that I have it, why not? A bonus, perhaps. Here,” he said pushing it toward me with one foot. “You open it. I need to keep my hands free,” he said, tilting his head toward the gun.

  My fingers were shaking so badly I had to struggle with the knots in the twine. It had started raining again, and the wet was soaking into my clothes and dripping off my hair into my eyes.

  “Take your time,” he said. I was, desperately hoping that help would come, and surreptiously trying to look about me. The trouble with being at the sacred center of ancient Ireland, the Axis Mundi, a place from whence all of Ireland could theoretically be seen, and a fire burning here could be repeated from hilltop to hilltop until it could be seen across the island, is that there is nowhere to run. Or more accurately, I could run, but there was nowhere to hide from the maniac with whom I found myself inhabiting the place, except perhaps, a very small clump of trees on the downward slope to the west. To get to it, I would have to pass him.

  “Your father did look for you,” I said, desperately hoping to buy myself time, or distract him for a moment. “Owen Mac Roth, I mean. Your birth father. He looked everywhere for you.”

  “Did he now? How touching. I’m sure he was to be pitied. As I was.”

  “Eamon did too. They wouldn’t tell him, the authorities, I mean.”

  “Need I say, too little and too late?”

  “But the family, Margaret and the three daughters, are innocent. They know nothing of all of this. Surely you know this.”

  “I too was innocent,” he replied. “But I suffered immeasurably because of Eamon Byrne. If I cannot have my revenge on Eamon Byrne, I will have it on his children. Besides, they have lived a life of luxury in their innocence. Whatever they wanted, I’m willing to wager, Eamon would have given them. And now I will bring them to ruin. Please continue with that package.”

  I did. I knew he was getting angry, and I didn’t want to provoke him. But I wanted to tell him, although I didn’t dare, that he was wrong. He wasn’t going to destroy Eamon Byrne’s children. Oh yes, he could ruin them financially. But I had seen the determination in Eithne Byrne’s eyes, and I didn’t think she could be defeated.

  Thinking about that kept me going, looking for some way out of the horrible predicament in which I found myself. But I knew I was running out of time. At last, the knots loosened. Whoever had wrapped this package, had known what they were doing. Carefully I rolled open the plastic, to find another roll, this one of unbleached linen.

  “Stop,” he ordered. “Let’s have a little fun. What do you think it is?”

  “Nuada Silver Hand’s sword,” I said.

  “Interesting. How did you arrive at that conclusion?” he said.

  “The first letter of each of the clues, starting at the end, with the last one, like ogham, bottom to top, spelled out Nuada Argat-lam,” I said. “Eamon Byrne was always looking for the treasures of the gods, so I figure this has to be the sword, one of the four gifts of the gods. It’s long enough, isn’t it?”

  “Ah, interesting. Let’s see if you’re right,” he said. “Proceed. You’ve come this far, you might as well finish it.”

  I thought that whatever it was, it would have to be pretty spectacular to distract him for a moment or two so I could try to get away. I wasn’t sure a worn-out old iron sword would do it.

  But it wasn’t Nuada’s sword. As the next layer of wrapping was pulled aside I saw a hand, a silver hand. Across the lower knuckles of the silver fingers were four large jewels, rubies, I’d say, and at the second joint were four little windows, in a clear stone, polished quartz, perhaps. It wasn’t pagan, though, not something that would date to the time of Nuada, if ever he existed. It was Christian and very old, what is referred to as a reliquary, something to hold the bones of someone very special, a bishop perhaps, or even a saint. There was scrollwork etched into the silver in Celtic patterns, and it was one of the most beautiful works of art I had ever seen.

  “Let’s see!” Charles said, and I handed it to him. It was heavy and for a second he set down the gun. I lunged for it, but he saw me coming, also reached for it, and it spun to the ground a few yards away. As he scrambled to retrieve it, I made a dash for it, slipping and sliding down the side of the hill, trying to make for the shelter of some trees.

  “Stop!” he yelled. But I didn’t. I heard the report of the gun, felt a short burst of pain in my side. Nothing much, I thought. He can’t really have hurt me. But then my legs wouldn’t work and I found myself falling, then lying, facedown in the mud. I heard first some shouting, then a roaring in my ears, as the rain kept running in rivulets over my hands, and the world darkened around me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  WISE AM I

  DYING, I can tell you, is not what it’s cut out to be. I can personally attest that all that stuff about bright lights, long tunnels, and a transcendent feeling of peace is a crock, a figment of someone’s imagination. I felt completely lucid but irritatingly cold, my fingers and toes blocks of ice.

  I could hear everything, understood everything. I just couldn’t move or speak, although I followed everything with a kind of detached interest as if it really had nothing to do with me. I had it in my mind, however, that I had something very important to say.

  Gradually, I began to realize that some of the voices I could hear belonged to people I knew. I recognized Rob, Alex, and then Moira and Clive. Moira and Clive! Either I was having an otherworldly exp
erience, or I’d been out for a bit, long enough for Moira and Clive to get themselves across the Atlantic to Ireland. And if the latter possibility was the correct one, then I must have been in pretty bad shape.

  I heard a door swing open, and new footsteps in the room.

  “Hello Breeta, dear,” Alex said.

  “How is she?” Breeta said. She sounded almost her old self. That was something, anyway. And I’d certainly be interested in the answer to her question.

  “She’s come through the operation all right,” someone said, a doctor presumably.

  How reassuring, I thought.

  “But now it’s a matter of seeing how she does over the next few hours.”

  What did that mean? I wondered.

  “Can she hear us?” Breeta demanded.

  “Possibly,” the doctor said. “It’s good to keep talking to her.”

  I heard footsteps come up right beside me and breath very near my ear. “I know you’ve had a very bad time, frightened for your life out there on the hill with that lunatic; shot and lying there in the mud and the rain,” Breeta said. “And I’ll grant you that Rob and the gardai cut it a little fine getting to you. And no doubt being operated on for hours and hours must have been very difficult whether you were conscious or not. But you’ve had long enough. From now on you’re just wallowing. So pull yourself together, and wake up!”

  People who hurl your own words back at you when you are in a weakened condition are a blight on the landscape, I decided. Not quite as bad as people who shoot you, perhaps, but a blight, nonetheless. I ignored her.

  “This is all my fault,” Jennifer sobbed. “She went after that awful man because she was worried about me.”

  “No, it’s not,” Rob said. “It’s mine. I lied about where I was going when I left the station. I didn’t want anybody to know I’d gone to Maeve’s place to discuss things. If I’d told someone, or gone back to my room sooner, we’d have figured it out and got there before she did.”

  Oh dear, I thought, I really will have to rouse myself and say something. I wouldn’t want them to go through life thinking it was their fault. I was the one who’d persisted in this whole thing. Heaven knows, I should have known better. Deirdre had warned me after all. But I couldn’t wake up, try as I might. Instead, I found myself drifting away. Soon, I was sitting in an empty theater, empty, that is, except for me. A single spotlight made a bright circle on the stage.

  After a few minutes of silence, I heard loud echoing footsteps, and a man in bowler hat, black suit, and umbrella, his face painted completely white, stepped into the circle of light. I kept staring at him, thinking I should know who he was, but I couldn’t figure it out, and in the end I gave up trying.

  “And now, for your viewing enjoyment,” the man said. “For one last time on the silver screen, sailor, world traveller, scholar, antiquarian, successful entrepreneur, and family man, from County Kerry, Ireland, please welcome, ladies and gentlemen, Missssster Eamonnnnnn Byrrrne!”

  The screen behind the man lit up, as his footsteps died away, and there, larger, much larger, than life, was, as announced, Eamon Byrne. “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you all together,” the giant face said. “Particularly,” and here he coughed, “particularly seeing as how I’m dead.”

  “I’ve seen this one,” I said to the empty theater. “This must be summer reruns.”

  But it wasn’t.

  “I wish,” Eamon Byrne said looking right at me. “I wish more than anything, that I’d told them, all of them, my sister Rose, my friends, my business partners, my staff, Kitty, John, Michael, even Deirdre, my wife Margaret, but most especially my darling daughters, my little Eriu, Fotla, and Banba—I wish that instead of saying those horrible things I did, that I’d told them that I love them.”

  And with that the screen went blank and I was back in my hospital room.

  This, it seemed to me, called for decisive action. With all the strength I could muster, I opened my eyes. I must have been gone awhile, because Breeta was no longer there. All the rest of them were, though, and they were the ones I wanted to talk to.

  “She’s awake,” Alex exclaimed.

  “About time,” Moira said, smiling at me.

  I tried to move my lips. It was a slow and painstaking process. “I,” I said, slowly and as distinctly as I could. They all leaned forward.

  “Love,” I said. Their eyes widened.

  “Ou,” I concluded, trying to take all of them in one glance. There was something about the Y sound I couldn’t manage.

  “Even ou, Clive,” I said slowly. He hugged Moira and planted a sloppy kiss on my cheek.

  “Brilliant!” Rob said, smiling down at me.

  My next trip to Ireland was some months later, to testify at Charles McCafferty’s trial. I was not there long, the trip cut short by an incident that still plays across the back of my eyelids from time to time, or drags me from my sleep, gasping and tearing at the bedclothes. On the first day of the trial Charles had looked relaxed and confident, as if certain his charm would carry the day. And you know, it might have. On the second, as he was being lead to the courtroom from the paddy wagon, his arms shackled behind him, Conail O’Connor stepped from behind a van, raised a rifle, and shot him dead. The trial was a big one, covered by media from all over the country, and the scene was played over and over on television, Charles dying in slow motion time and time again.

  In my mind, he saw his killer, although I can’t be sure he did. I think he probably viewed his own death with the same detached equanimity he had his life. On the other hand, I’m not sure how I feel about all this. While I consider him more sinning than sinned against, particularly where Michael Davis is concerned, I feel the occasional small tug of compassion when I think of Charles. I can only hope the Byrne/Mac Roth blood feud died with him.

  On a happier note, Byrne Enterprises is making its way back, led by a triumvirate: the three Byrne sisters. The family is planning to donate the silver reliquary to a museum, as soon as they have enough income to qualify for the tax receipt, and will use the savings this allows them over the next few years to expand the business. It’s going to be a long road back, but somehow I know they’re going to do it. I like the idea of Byrne Enterprises being run by the triple goddess of the Tuatha dé Danaan—Eriu, Fotla, and Banba. How can they fail with all that magic on their side?

  Sean McHugh is running one of the businesses again, as vice president of something or other, reporting to his wife and sisters-in-law, but Fionuala and Conail have permanently called it quits. Conail apparently thought that if he revenged the family on Charles, his wife would stand by her man. He was wrong. Last I heard, Fionuala, not one to be wasting time visiting her ex-husband in prison, had set her sights on Ryan McGlynn. One can only hope, for her sake, that the resemblance between Tweedledum and Tweedledee goes only skin deep.

  Second Chance has been sold. Margaret has made her way back to Connemara, and, much to my surprise, has actually written me to inquire about my health. The others have stayed in the Dingle: Eithne and Sean have a small house in town and Breeta is living quite happily in Rose Cottage with Paddy Gilhooly and their lovely baby girl. They’ve named her Rose. I found an absolutely wonderful antique bed for the little darling, and shipped it over. Alex has refused to charge them any rent, so Breeta and Paddy are gradually fixing the place up for him, including putting in electricity and a new lane from the main road. Alex says that someday, a long time from now, he plans to retire there. Vigs, I gather, stays with the cottage.

  Jennifer Luczka is off to university. She’s doing well at her classes. She also has a new boyfriend. She’s bringing him home to meet us at Thanksgiving. Rob is steeling himself for the ordeal.

  It is taking me considerably longer than I thought it should to get well again after the operation, the perils of being in your forties, I suppose. As Rob keeps telling me, middle age isn’t for wimps. The doctors have told me to take it one day at a time, which I’ve tried to do, i
mpatient though I usually am. I do feel reasonably well, at last, and am grateful to be alive.

  Moira has decided that my life would be much better if there was a man in it, a view I’m not sure I share, and she has set her sights on Rob as my next partner. All I can say about this is that if Rob and I continue our current glacial progress toward a more intimate relationship, by the time we actually get there, we’ll only be capable of chaste kisses before we pass each other the glue for our dentures. In the meantime, however, I’m not much interested in anybody else.

  Moira has also decided, in an indirect way, some other things about my future. Greenhalgh & McClintoch is gone, but McClintoch & Swain is back in business. Sarah Greenhalgh, who didn’t find retail nearly as exciting as she thought it would be most of the time, and way too exciting the rest of the time, asked me if I’d care to buy her out. The decision for Clive and me to reunite, in a business sense only, came at a three-way conference at my kitchen counter.

  “I have a proposal for you,” Clive said carefully, clearing his throat and glancing over at Moira as he spoke. “With Sarah intent on leaving, and your having been a little under the weather for so long, we’ve been thinking you might like some help with the store. What do you say to our getting together again? You have a much better sense of the kinds of furniture and furnishings people like than I do, and you really do your research on antiques. I like to think I’m good at the design stuff, pulling it all together. What do you think?”