Chain of Evidence (21 page)

‘Are you going to sell?’ she enquired, leading the way outside onto the flat piece of garden in front of the castle where they could talk without being overheard. A splendid view, she thought looking straight down the almost perpendicular slope. The castle and its small area of pleasure grounds were perched like an eagle’s nest on the slope and far below it was the flooded valley floor. They were strange things those winter lakes,
tuarlach
s they were called. Once the summer weather came the water would drain back into the limestone caves below and grass would spring up, fresh, and luscious, more nourishing to cows than anything from the higher fields. But at the moment small waves rippled its surface where swans rocked happily. Her eyes went toward the west where the farm that was Jarlath’s portion was perched on a similar hill. Good limestone land, she thought. If he were to sell it and Peadar were to sell the farm that had been Garrett’s portion from the old lord, then the place of the MacNamaras in the Burren was going to be even more diminished. Already they were the smallest of the four clans. Perhaps, after another few years, their main seat of residence would no longer be in Burren, but would have shifted to Thomond. And, of course, she thought with a slight chill, the next
taoiseach
of the MacNamara clan may decide to give up the allegiance of his forebears and bend the knee to the English king. In that case she would prefer that there were no MacNamaras left in any of the three kingdoms ruled over by her husband. The O’Donnell clan, she had heard, were not happy that part of their ancient lands were now owned by Henry VIII of London.

‘I think so,’ Jarlath said with a slight hesitation, carefully considering her enquiry, ‘but I won’t rush into anything. I would prefer to sell it to a MacNamara, of course. Perhaps Tomás would buy it for his son. But I am certain that I want to go back to the sea. I’m going to Galway tomorrow to look for a new ship and to buy some new sails for Garrett’s big ship; Ardal O’Lochlainn has told me of a place which has sails of all sorts for sale. I know I could get some made here, but I have a feeling that I want to be out of this place as soon as possible. You don’t mind if I go to Galway for a day, do you, Brehon?’

Mara thought about that. Until the murder case was solved she did not care to have anyone involved go outside the kingdom. On the other hand, Jarlath had, by all accounts, arrived at about the same time as the stampeding herd, which had been slowed by the very steep hill going up to Carron. Even if it were a little earlier than was known, he would hardly have had time to quarrel with his brother and to hurl the dead body down the hillside into the path of the cattle. Nuala had been fairly sure that Garrett had been dead for some time before being trampled on by the hoofs.

‘I wanted to talk to you about something, Jarlath,’ she said, not answering his question. ‘You sent some sweetmeats from Spain up to Slaney earlier this afternoon . . .’

He frowned in puzzlement. ‘Not today,’ he said emphatically. ‘I brought some boxes of these sweets home with me and gave them to Garrett and Slaney the day that I arrived.’ A grin twitched at the corners of his mouth. ‘Slaney ate quite a few – they weren’t to Garrett’s taste, nor to mine, either, though I had a few to be polite; so then she decided to put them away in her stillroom, so that the crowd coming for the wake would not get their dirty paws on them. That was her
expression
, not mine,’ he added, the grin spreading.

So that was it, thought Mara. Another puzzle. Presumably most of the household would have access to the still room; there would be no reason to have it locked. Anyone could have inserted these fibres from the root of the cowbane plant into the sweetmeats. Despite the efforts of farmers, the plant grew everywhere on swampy ground and after a wet spring like this it would be flourishing; its frilly leaves and tall, lacy, faintly pink flowers decorating every ditch.

Mara looked thoughtfully at Jarlath. There was no real reason to suspect him, she thought. She appreciated Fiona’s point that a man who voluntarily gave up the position of
taoiseach,
and that yearly tribute of eighty ounces of silver or equivalent which Garrett had been exacting from his clan
,
was unlikely to be the sort of person who would murder from a desire to gain more possessions.

‘Well, I hope you have a pleasant day in Galway, and that you find what you are looking for, but of course you must wait until after the inauguration of the new
taoiseach
and the burial of your brother, and then a day away should be fine. Don’t make any arrangements for a permanent departure, though, will you? I think that I would prefer you to wait until I have solved the puzzle of your brother’s death.’ She said the last words firmly and saw his eyes move from hers and look over her shoulder at something behind her. She turned and saw the tall, broad-shouldered shape of Rhona standing above them outlined against the grey sky. She was standing with her side turned facing north as if she were looking towards Scotland. Mara looked at her thoughtfully.

‘Rhona is coming with me into Galway,’ said Jarlath casually. ‘She wants to get back to Scotland as soon as possible and there are a few goods that she wants to buy for Peadar to have him settled into the house on Garrett’s farm before she leaves. He is determined to stay and she wants to go home, so they will have to part. I’ll let her know that she must delay her departure, but that we may have our day in Galway once Garrett’s funeral and the inauguration have taken place.’

‘I’m sure that you will be of immense help to her,’ said Mara. Rhona would miss her son, she thought, but it was the way of the world. Her own daughter, Sorcha, had been married when she was not too much older than Peadar was now.

All facets of a case must be considered before finding a person guilty; grounds for suspicion may be:

However, all judgements must bear in mind the character of the accused and the history of his life.

‘S
hane has a brilliant idea, Brehon,’ said Hugh over his shoulder as soon as they had mounted their horses and cantered away from the castle.

‘Oh, yes, what is it, Shane?’ Mara had been riding beside Nuala, but the girl was silent and unresponsive so she
abandoned
her and moved up to join Hugh and Shane.

‘Well, it’s this, Brehon,’ Shane cast a glance around and waited until Mara was quite close before saying, ‘I kept thinking about how could the body of Garrett be thrown down in front of the cows. He must have weighed at least a couple of hundredweight. No man, and certainly no woman, could lift a weight like that and hurl it down the mountain. And I considered the possibility of the murderer putting the body on some sort of cart and tying it loosely with a chain and shooting it down. But then I thought that couldn’t have been the way, as the cart would have broken up into bits and the O’Lochlainn would have mentioned seeing something like that – and someone would have missed a cart – they’re valuable, these things.’

‘And you threw out a few questions, did you?’ Mara had noticed that most of the servants had been chosen by Fachtnan to stand in the line leading to Shane and that he had taken longer than his fellow scholars over the questioning.

‘Well, I thought I would use my initiative, Brehon,’ said Shane demurely. ‘I had a word with Fachtnan. Don’t worry; I cloaked the questions well. But after a while I began to despair of my idea. There certainly were no pieces of a cart, no wood at all when we searched the road and that is quite a high and well-built wall on the far side of it so it could not have gone on tumbling down the other side of the road, but then I had another idea. Could we stop here, Brehon, and I’ll explain to you?’

By this time they had come to the length of road where Garrett’s body had been found. Mara called out to Fachtnan to stop and the others joined them, dismounting and holding the reins of the restive horses.

‘Are we going to have another search?’ Aidan was glancing around. ‘I’m sure we didn’t miss anything the last time, Brehon. We went over it really carefully.’

‘I’ve got an idea and I think it’s quite a good one,’ said Shane with his usual air of quiet confidence. ‘What if someone murdered Garrett earlier on in the day? After all no one had seen him since midday when Rhona heard the shouting match between him and Slaney – anyway, they murdered him and concealed the body and was wondering about burying him or throwing him in the lake after everyone had gone to bed. And then, the word comes about the cattle raid so – and here is the clever bit – our murderer – OM – slips out here with the body on a cart or something, and then gets an old millstone – there are quite a few cracked ones up there near to the old mill building – ties the body to it with the length of chain and sets it to roll down the hill, right into the path of the stampeding cattle. And what, my friends,’ demanded Shane rhetorically, ‘what happens to a millstone, when it tumbles down from a height and hits the road at high speed?’

‘It smashes,’ said Hugh beaming with pleasure at his friend’s cleverness. ‘And,’ he added, ‘that is why we found no sign of anything strange. There’s stone everywhere – and lots of it is broken – loose boulders are always tumbling down those steep hills.’

‘Not bad,’ said Moylan. ‘Well done, young fellow. I never thought of that. Let’s search. These ditches are full of stone.’

‘It might be the case,’ admitted Mara, but somehow she did not believe it. Still, it was clever of Shane to think of it and it did fit in with the idea at the back of her mind. She would have a word with Cumhal, she thought. He was the man who would be able to visualize the effect of hysterical cattle being driven at high speed.

In the meantime, she encouraged her scholars to search the ditch and the hillside above and was as pleased as Shane when two pieces of stone turned up, each bearing the unmistakable rounded profiles of an old millstone.

‘Let me make the case,’ said Shane standing very tall and suddenly appearing older. ‘Our murderer, OM, killed Garrett, probably with a blow to the head, laid him on the hillside above him – or her, for that matter.’ With a quick gesture he indicated a space above where they stood. ‘He laid the body on the slope, head at the top, looped a chain around Garrett’s ankle – he could easily have got one from that cabin there – and then he found an old millstone – you know they will never reuse one that has the smallest crack in it – tied the chain loosely to it with a piece of twine – through the centre, a single knot, not a double one – just a loose knot that would unravel easily. Then, when the thunder of hoofs came to his ears, he rolled the millstone down the hill – the millstone cracked into dozens of fragments – and then a few minutes later the marauders arrived with the cattle running ahead of them. Garrett’s body was trampled and they went on.’

‘Very well argued,’ said Mara with a smile at her youngest scholar. ‘A very possible picture, isn’t it? Has anyone else anything to say?’

‘It’s just so difficult, isn’t it, to see whether this is a premeditated murder, or whether it just happened, quite suddenly on the spur of the moment,’ complained Fiona. ‘I suppose it has to be the spur of the moment, but it does seem complicated. All this finding a handy millstone and tying of a chain to the ankle . . .’

‘I think,’ said Mara, ‘that when we get back to Cahermacnaghten, our first task will be to examine the
question
of opportunity for our suspects.’

‘I believe that Shane has done jolly well,’ said Moylan taking up his position as head of the law school and bestowing unusual praise on a junior.

‘Thank you.’ Shane was quite pink with pleasure and Mara gave Moylan an approving smile.

‘I think so, too,’ she said and then mounted her mare again. The few days ahead of her promised to be of great complexity, but first of all, she needed to consult with Turlough.

However, when they reached the law school, Turlough was missing. His men-at-arms happily feeding in Brigid’s kitchen house were bemused when she enquired and jumped to
attention
instantly.

‘We thought he was at your house, Brehon,’ said Fergal guiltily.

‘He’s probably gone down the road to see Cormac,’ said Mara. ‘Bran is missing too.’ Her giant wolfhound would never miss the opportunity of visiting Cormac in his foster home. He seemed to know that this little boy should really be part of his own household and always looked mournful when Cormac was returned to his foster parents.

Mara had hardly said the words when the bodyguards, red with embarrassment, shot out. She did not blame them for taking their eye off their lord, though she knew that they were consumed with guilt; Turlough was always trying to escape from them, complaining that it got on his nerves to be shadowed wherever he went. At the moment there was peace with his old enemy, the O’Flaherty, whose kingdom bordered that of the Burren but this cattle raid had shown that O’Flaherty and his clan were glad to lend a hand in facilitating the raiders.

‘I shouldn’t have kept them eating and talking but I thought that the king was lying on his bed in your house.’ Brigid sounded anxious and guilty.

Mara was not particularly worried about Turlough so she went into the schoolhouse, sat down and began to think about the murder of Garrett MacNamara. She sat there for a long time until the scholars, followed by Nuala and Fachtnan, all refreshed by their meal, trooped in. They took their usual seats, Shane and Hugh at the table in front of hers and the three older scholars, Fiona, Aidan and Moylan, just behind them. Nuala perched on the broad windowsill and for a moment Mara wondered whether Fachtnan would join her there, but he went to his stool beside Mara’s chair and did not glance in Nuala’s direction. Mara sighed inwardly. Was there anything that she could do to bring about this marriage? she thought. Fachtnan was an adequate lawyer, but his poor memory made it most unlikely that he would ever be able to pass the stringent examinations that would qualify him as a Brehon. He was having a struggle with the body of knowledge needed to qualify him as an
ollamh
or professor, but she was determined that he should achieve that. He was, to her mind, a gifted teacher with a patience and a mature understanding that made her want to keep him permanently at her school. Next year, she thought, when Aidan and Moylan have moved on, I shall expand my school, take in a whole class of young children and train them up as future Brehons. Fachtnan will be ideal for them, and for Hugh; while I can give Fiona and Shane the fast pace and attention that their brains deserve.