Archeological Mystery: Celtic Riddle Part 8

"I'd like to treat you to tea, Deirdre," I said, gesturing for her to put down her purse. "What did the family have a falling out over, do you know?"

Deirdre shrugged. "I didn't hear. Money, I expect, and the business. Mr. McHugh and Mr. O'Connor were running Byrne Enterprises between them while Mr. Ea-mon Byrne was ill, and they didn't get on too well. It was all right while Mr. Byrne was in charge: he made them work together, but after..." Her voice trailed off.

"And Conail and Fionuala? What happened to them?"

"The usual, I expect," Deirdre replied primly. "She was always one to be looking around, and he corrupted with drink. Bone lazy as a result of it. The Irish curse, you know. Alcohol. The English brought it on us."

The English got blamed for quite a few things around here, I was beginning to notice. As I was getting my wallet to pay the bill, I looked toward the bar. It looked nice, the walls deep blue, with lots of old posters, nicely framed, advertising various types of brew. Newcastle Brown Ale! one poster said. Courage! said another. Apparently they drank English beer here, their views of the English notwithstanding.

I looked at the sign for the British brew, and then picked up one of the spoons and peered at the crest on the handle. It was a boar, rather fierce-looking with two bones crossed in its mouth. "What's the name of this place, Deirdre?" I asked.

"Here or the bar?" she replied. "This is Brigid's Tea Room: That's Brigid over there," she said pointing to the woman who had brought the tea and who was now at the cash. "The pub's called The Boar's Head Arms."

"Give me a minute," I said. I took a piece of paper out of my bag and scribbled a note on it. I handed both the money and the note to Brigid. She looked at it, and then me.

"Come with me," she said finally. She picked up a tray of tea and headed up a flight of stairs to the second floor. This was obviously the living quarters for Brigid and her family. An elderly woman sat in a large armchair in front of a television set. She looked up as we entered the room and surveyed me suspiciously. "Is everything all right?" she asked Brigid in a querulous voice.

"Just grand, Mother. Here's your tea now. How are you feeling?"

"As well as can be expected, at my age. Is it strawberry preserves?" the woman replied, poking at the food with a spoon. Apparently satisfied, she turned to me. She was very frail, her hands almost transparent and lined with blue veins, her hair absolutely white. Despite the warmth of the room, which I found uncomfortable, she was wrapped in a blanket, and she was almost dwarfed by the large chair in which she sat. But her eyes were bright, and I had the impression she was sharp as a tack.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"My name is Lara," I said.

"She's come for Eamon's clue, Mother," Brigid said. "She has the pa.s.sword, 'the boar enraged.' "

"You're not from around here. How would you know about it?" the old woman asked suspiciously.

"A friend of mine received something from Eamon Byrne in his Will."

"Who is your friend, and what did he get?"

"His name is Alex Stewart, and he was left Rose Cottage."

The old woman looked surprised, and then peered at me intently. "Then he must have been a special friend of Eamon's."

"I suppose in some way he was," I agreed. "Alex saved Eamon's life long ago."

The woman just nodded. "He was a fine man, no matter what they say. He's been very good to us. Wasn't his fault what happened, you know."

"And what was that?" I asked, but Brigid returned from another room and handed me a piece of paper.

"None of your gossip now, Mother," she admonished her mother. "Pay her no mind," she said to me as she lead me to the door.

I'd have loved to ask more, but one thing about this place seemed clear. If there were secrets here, and there were enough hints they existed, people were not about to share them, at least with me.

I walked Deirdre back to the car, and got out her bag, and waited with her until the bus came. As she was about to board, she turned and handed me the hat-box. "For Breeta, when she's ready," she said.

She was almost on the bus when I thought of one more question. "Who gets Michael's and John's money now that they're gone, do you know?"

She paused, one foot up on the lower step, perplexed. "Now, that's a question, isn't it? I can't say as I recall. I was so pleased to be receiving something I didn't pay much heed to the rest of it." She shrugged and stepped up on to the bus. "I don't expect it's me."

As the bus pulled out, I opened the hatbox. Vigs was happily munching on a lettuce leaf inside.

"What am I going to do with you?" I asked him. The simple answer was give him to Breeta as Deirdre had suggested. There were two problems with that. In the first place, I wasn't sure this was the best idea. Michael had gone back to Second Chance to get Vigs at Breeta's request, and while neither she nor the tortoise could be blamed for what happened, the sight of the little creature might upset her. The second was that I didn't know where she was. Sheila, the innkeeper, had said Breeta had been seen around looking for work and a cheap place to stay, refusing, even under the circ.u.mstances, to move back home.

Rather fortuitously, or so I thought at the time, I caught sight of Breeta at a table of a small local eatery, and approached her, Vigs in his hatbox with me.

"May I join you for a moment?" I asked her. A few seconds went by before she nodded her a.s.sent and I sat down across from her and ordered a coffee.

Breeta went on eating, virtually ignoring me. She was obviously eating for two, a rather large platter of fish and chips in front of her, with bread on the side, and a large cola too.

"I'm so sorry about what happened, Breeta," I said. "Michael was a lovely young man. This has all been quite dreadful." Breeta concentrated on working on the meal in front of her. It was not so much eating, come to think of it, as stuffing food in her mouth. She barely chewed it. I had the feeling that, whether she was conscious of it or not, she was stuffing herself with food to keep churning emotions, grief and anger, from rising up and pouring out of her.

"Breeta," I went on undeterred, although the sight of all that greasy food making its way so rapidly into her mouth was making me slightly nauseated. "I was wondering, I mean, I'm very worried about what has happened, and as selfish as this sounds, what it might mean to Alex. First John, and then Michael. I'm so afraid that being involved in this Will may be very dangerous for everyone named. I'm sure your father never thought that such awful things would happen..."

"I hate him," she said vehemently. "Hate him!"

"But perhaps finding the treasure would put a stop to this," I went on after a few seconds pause after this outburst. "We, Alex and I and some friends, have found a number of clues already. I have them back at the hotel. If you would just have a look at them, I'm sure you could help us. You know so much about Celtic history and..."

"No!" she exclaimed. "Stop. Never. I will never forgive my father for this. My life... ruined." She looked as if she would cry, but then stuffed some more chips in her mouth.

"But Breeta, you need the money," I protested. "Please..." I reached over to touch her hand. She wrenched it away.

"Leave me alone," she said getting up from her chair. "Go away. This is all your fault. Why did you have to come here?" She almost ran to the cas.h.i.+er and then out the door. Stung, I let her go. After a few minutes of feeling awful, I picked up Vigs and trundled him back to the Inn, where he was greeted with real enthusiasm by Sheila and Aidan's three young children, and resignation on the part of Sheila herself. Then I headed for the bar, and ordered a drink: nothing wimpy like wine, this time-a single malt Irish on ice.

It was depressing to think that Breeta blamed me for what happened. I told myself it was ridiculous to feel guilty about everything, but found it almost impossible not to wonder if I had, however unwittingly, done something that had set off a chain of events. But if this was the case, then I had to do something to fix it. The question was, what? It was not lost on me that not everyone shared my enthusiasm for finding the treasure, but I could not think of what else to do. While there were dire hints about Byrne's past from time to time, the treasure remained the most logical place to start. I'd heard lots of tales about Byrne in the last few days, in this bar and around town. As Deirdre had said, he wasn't the most popular person in town, but there seemed to be a grudging admiration for his business ac.u.men. He kept to himself, it seemed, was not an habitue of the bars the way many in town were. And the place being what it was, he was still regarded by the locals as a newcomer, despite the fact he'd arrived in the Dingle a newly married man many years before. But there wasn't a whiff of anything that would meet Deirdre's criteria for a curse. The more I thought about it, the more Deirdre sounded like a superst.i.tious and perhaps not well-educated woman, and the more plausible the treasure as the key to the question about why Michael was killed: a clue had been found clutched in his dead hand, after all. In the end, I promised myself that I'd keep my eyes and ears open for more on Byrne, but concentrate on the treasure, though it was clear we were going to have to find it without Breeta's help.

Even without her, we were not doing so badly on that score. The first clues had been the easiest to find, all right around Second Chance. There was Alex's clue and Michael's, and then the one about the beauty of the plant, the one found clutched, at least part of it, in Michael's dead hand.

I'd a.s.sumed that one would be found in his garden, probably in the toolshed. When I got there, however, I discovered someone had gone looking ahead of me. At least, I thought that the only possible conclusion, because I couldn't believe that Michael, whom I'd watched meticulously tending his garden, would have left his domain in such a mess, with garden implements strewn everywhere, and broken pots and spilled soil in messy little heaps on the floor and worktable.

I was afraid that clue was lost to us, but then Rob saved the day, although he didn't know it. He'd stopped to admire a vase full of roses in the entrance-way of the Inn with the words, "quite the most beautiful of flowers, don't you think?" and I was off to Rose Cottage moments later. It was a bit of a trek because I was determined not to cross the Byrne property and went overland from the main road. It was worth the scratches from the wild berry bushes and the sc.r.a.pes from the rocks: once I got there, the clue was quickly located, wedged behind the door frame.

The next clues took us farther afield and had been quite a bit harder to find. The Dingle is a peninsula only about thirty miles long, and is often described as a finger that juts out into the sea, the farthest point west in Ireland. To me, though, the Dingle is not so much of a finger jutting out from a hand, but a primordial creature, mountains for its spine, its undulating torso slipping into the sea so that only the tip can be seen as the Blaskett Islands off sh.o.r.e, its head way down in the depths. In reality, it has four mountain areas, the Slieve Mish Mountains where the finger joins the hand, as it were, the Stradbally Mountains, Mount Brandon on the north side, and Mount Eagle to the southwest. In between are fabulously beautiful but isolated valleys, rocky gorges, and breathtaking vistas. Roads through the mountain pa.s.ses rise up steep inclines, then drop precipitously to the coast, where there are dozens of little towns and hundreds of ancient sites. In other words, there were a lot of places to search.

Nonetheless, we were making progress. I wouldn't go so far as to say we'd fanned out across the countryside with military precision or anything, but while Rob cooperated with the Irish police in the murder investigation-at least that's what he called it-the rest of us, with a copy of the poem Alex had dug out of the local library, and Malachy and Kevin's knowledge of the area, had set out to find the rest of the clues.

Kevin, who turned out to be rather good at all this, figured out the hawk above the cliff. "Has to be Mount Eagle," he said. "Hawk, bird of prey, eagle. Cliff, mountain. Not perfect, but where else could it be?" Mount Eagle turned out to be a rather big place, a mountain that ran down to the edge of the sea near Slea Head. Kevin lead our little ragtag bunch on a merry chase over the hilly terrain. We clambered over stone fences, dodging sheep and their p.o.o.p and slogging through the mud, stopping whenever we came to the remains of some ancient structure. Dotted over the landscape were ruins of tiny stone beehive-shaped huts, where centuries ago people had not so much lived as taken shelter, "clochans" Malachy called them. Many were just heaps of rubble, but others still stood as little masterpieces of engineering, carefully placed stones fitted together and angling up to a peak without benefit of mortar to form stone huts that had withstood centuries of weather, and various invasions.

"Eamon Byrne liked old places," Kevin said, as we looked about us, "so I think we should search them." We checked as many of them as we could, dodging through the low stone doorways and scanning the interior walls for any sign of a clue. We found nothing, but Malachy wouldn't give up. Eventually, we came upon the remains of an ancient stone fort right in the middle of a field. It was there, a tiny roll of paper wrapped in plastic and wedged between two stones. Malachy and Kevin were ecstatic.

Jennifer was an able a.s.sistant as well. She'd realized right away that ogham was read from right to left, or bottom to top, and saved us a lot of time. Who'd have thought that her thinking-outside-the-box cla.s.s, and its rather irritating lessons on how to talk backwards, would have had such practical application?

She found one of the clues by herself. From the vantage point of her sailing lessons out on the bay, she'd spied a CD store on sh.o.r.e called Music of the Sea. As soon as she'd hit dry land again, she'd climbed up a fire escape to get level with the sign, and found the clue taped to its underside.

The clue at the Boar's Head Arms disturbed me a little. Seven clues had been handed out, for Alex, Michael, Margaret, Eithne, Fionuala, and Breeta Byrne, as well as Padraig Gilhooly. The Boar's Head clue was the eighth line of the poem. Either that meant that every line did not lead to a clue-and since we only had our own, we didn't know-or that we were expected to figure out the clues were from Amairgen's Song and look then for every line of the poem.

Even before the Boar's Head clue, we were still missing the stag of seven slaughters and the ray of the sun. It was difficult to know whether to keep looking for them, or to a.s.sume someone else had found them first. Other than the mess in the garden shed and our little set-to with Conail O'Connor, there had been no signs of anyone else looking for clues. Maybe Margaret Byrne had been quite sincere in saying the family wouldn't be partic.i.p.ating, and Conail was the only renegade. Somehow, I doubted it, though. They'd shown themselves to be quite ruthless, certainly where Alex's inheritance of Rose Cottage was concerned, something else I still had to deal with. We should keep searching, I thought, looking about the bar. My eyes alighted on the painting over the fire, the scene which I found quite repulsive despite its quality, of a stag, its snout full of arrows, being set upon by a pack of hounds. Stag of seven slaughters, I breathed, counting the dogs. Seven, of course. Right under my nose.

Picking up my drink, I ambled over to the hearth in what I hoped was a nonchalant way, then stood for a minute or two with my back to the fire, drink in hand, that most Irish of poses. As Aidan entertained the lads at the bar with one of his stories, and all eyes seemed fixed on him, I pulled up the lower corner of the painting and took a quick peek behind. The clue was there, or at least it had been. All that was left of it was a comer of the paper still secured by the tape which had held it to the back of the painting. I quickly pulled it away. I would check it against the paper on which the clues we'd already found had been written, but there was little doubt my question had been answered and that at least one other person was, despite all protestations to the contrary, looking for the treasure just as we were. The question was who, and just how dangerous were they?

I went to the front desk to retrieve, from safekeeping, what we were calling the Master List, and added the Boar's Head clue to it, then studied it for a while. I took a fresh piece of paper, drew a line down the middle, and marked one column Amairgen 's Song and the other Ogham clues, and looked at what we had.

AMAIRGEN'S SONG.

I am the sea swell The furious wave The roar of the sea A stag of seven slaughters A hawk above the cliff A ray of the sun The beauty of a plant A boar enraged OGHAM CLUES.

May's sunrise by Tailte's Hill is seen A curse be on these stones Leinster's Hag to Eriu's Seat ---------.

Aine's Mount to Macha's Stronghold ----------.

Raise a cup to the stone Almu's white to Maeve's red It was all rather baffling. The ogham clues didn't seem to have anything in common with the lines of the poem, other than that the clues in the poem had led to their discovery. Was there supposed to be a direct relations.h.i.+p? I didn't know. It seemed to me that it was possible that the first ogham clue referred to a real place. What of the rest? Almu's white to Maeve's red sounded like a board game to me, White Queen or something to Red whatever. I a.s.sumed that Maeve wasn't Garda Maeve Minogue, although I had absolutely no basis for thinking that. Maeve, I knew, had been an ancient Celtic queen.

Three of the ogham clues had a something-to-something-else pattern, again perhaps directions, but the trouble was I didn't know what, or where, any of these things were. Stones were big, that was certain. The clues irritated me: they were either coy or the product of someone who thought he knew a whole lot more than the rest of us. I felt I was being toyed with and by a dead man at that. But I did acknowledge, reluctantly, that had the circ.u.mstances been different, that is, had the family and the rest of us been working together amicably, this might have been fun. But whose fault was it they didn't?

A curse be on Eamon Byrne, I thought, rather uncharitably, which led me right back to what Deirdre had said and to the other hints about something bad in the past that no one would tell me. I understood their reticence. Really, why should they tell a total stranger, and one from far away, their worst secrets? This was the Dingle, after all, a wild and relatively remote place with its own ways. Even in Ireland, I suspected, it would be regarded as someplace different: the Gael-tacht, the Gaelic-speaking part of Ireland, a throwback in an ail-too modern world. But it was frustrating nonetheless.

I decided that maybe we really would have to come at this several different ways. Malachy, Kevin, and Jennifer could search for more clues. Alex I'd send on another research project, to the local library, or wherever, to begin to identify the names in the ogham clues. Myself, I thought I'd do a little poking around in Eamon Byrne's past. After all, we had the time. We were stuck here for a while as the murder investigation marked its stately course. Currently, we were awaiting the possible exhumation of John Heriihy to check for poison in his system, an outcome I didn't doubt for a minute.

Rob, I thought, was perfectly happy to stay indefinitely. He'd managed to convince his superiors on the force back home to lend him to the local authorities for a while, a stroke of good fortune, according to Rob, as it meant he'd be paid while he was here. I rather thought he would consider it a stroke of good fortune for other reasons, but held my tongue. Jennifer was only too happy to be able to stay a little longer. While Rob had initially objected to her taking sailing lessons from Padraig Gilhooly, who he reasoned was part of a murder investigation, I'd persuaded him to lighten up a little, there being no evidence whatsoever to implicate Padraig. Several of Paddy's chums had attested to his presence at their favorite watering hole the afternoon the Will was being read and the evening Michael had died. His landlady-he had a flat in town-claimed to have heard him come in shortly after closing time, not to leave again till morning. In any event, Jennifer loved her sailing lessons, was beginning to make some friends in town, and had really blossomed, not nearly the shy and rather immature person I'd arrived with. Alex was his normal calm self.

The only problem for me was the shop, and I was starting to fret about it. Sarah didn't seem terribly perturbed when I told her my return had been delayed, saying that Clive was being very helpful. This development I found disturbing. What exactly was Clive, the rat, up to, I wondered. I decided I'd go up to the room before the others came back so I could phone my friend, and Clive's new partner, Moira, to a.s.sess the situation without having to admit I was worried. I hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, then turned back to put the Master List under lock and key once again at the front desk. I felt sort of silly doing this: carrying around my cash and credit cards, but locking up a piece of paper, but right from the start, I'd decided to be safe rather than sorry.

A good thing it was too. I opened the door to Jennifer's and my room, and my jaw dropped. If I needed confirmation that we weren't the only ones in this treasure hunt, I had it. The place was a shambles. The room had been thoroughly searched. The mattresses had been lifted and pushed against a wall, the carpet tossed in a heap in a corner; the drawers were all open and contents dumped; our suitcases had been lifted down from the shelf in the cupboard, opened and dropped as well. Even the bathroom had been searched. It looked as if every packet in my cosmetic bag had been opened.

Conail again, I wondered, or worse yet, Breeta? As much as I didn't like to think it, I had told her that very afternoon that we had several clues back at the Inn. At peak time in the bar, the residential part of the Inn was pretty much left untended. The front door of that part of the Inn was kept locked, but to someone who knew their way around the place, it would be easy enough to get in, through the kitchen, or the entrance off the bar. I'd given her plenty of time while I'd moped around the bar, licking my wounds after her accusations.

Shocked, I just stood there staring at the mess. Eventually I became conscious of footsteps coming up the stairs and two familiar voices.

"It's my money," Jennifer said. "You said so. You said I could do whatever I wanted with it."

"No daughter of mine," Rob began as they rounded the corner and stopped dead at the open door. Jennifer gasped.

Two thoughts came into my mind at that moment. One was that Rob was just being an old p.o.o.p where Jennifer was concerned, and I was going to tell him so. The second was that it was time I saw a little more of Ireland.

We stood silently in the doorway for a moment or two.

"Ffuts ym gnihcuot mucs etah I," Jennifer said at last.

"Oot em," I agreed.

Chapter Nine.

A SALMON IN A POOL.

DEIRDRE almost dropped the tea tray when she saw me. And a shame it would have been too, as it would have fallen on an exquisite antique Aubusson carpet, and dashed to pieces some very fine porcelain cups. I suppose it might actually have cost her her job, the obsession of her new employer being what it was.

While n.o.body in these parts talks about it much, there was a period of time when Dublin was the second city of the British Empire, rivalling, and in some ways surpa.s.sing, London in grandeur and conspicuous consumption. London had its Thames, Dublin its Liffey, both cities taking advantage of strategic maritime positions to ensure a vibrant trade in goods from the far-flung reaches of the Empire, and in Dublin's case, a corresponding outflow of its magnificent craftsmans.h.i.+p, silver, porcelain, gla.s.s, and textiles, to grace stately English homes across the Irish sea.

In addition to bitter memories of repression and sectarian violence, that period left Dublin with some im- pressive public monuments-broad sweeping avenues, soaring bridges and architectural gems like the Four Courts, home of the Irish law courts since 1796, and the Custom House with its graceful arcades, columns and soaring dome-together with some glorious urban s.p.a.ces like St. Stephen's Green, a perfect Georgian square surrounding a pleasant little park, where the offices of McCafferty & McGlynn, Solicitors, were to be found.

While Deirdre Flood might have thought that Dublin was sufficiently far away that she would never have to see any of us a.s.sociated with Second Chance again, it was, in reality, only a few short hours' train ride from Tralee.

Jennifer had mentioned several times that she'd like to see Dublin, and I'd managed, quite easily, to persuade Rob to let me take her there for a couple of days' sight-seeing. This little excursion of ours worked well for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that we were all getting on each other's nerves. What no daughter of Rob's was to do, apparently, was to cut her hair, buy herself dark lipstick and black clothes- tights, turtleneck, and a short skirt that she wore with her trusty Dr Martens-and, horror of horrors, put a rhinestone stud in her nose. Telling Rob that almost every girl Jennifer's age had done something similar fell on deaf ears, and so I'd resorted to calling him an old p.o.o.p to his face, as I'd promised myself that I would if he didn't listen to reason, a statement that, while true in my opinion, did not exactly endear me to him. A little s.p.a.ce between us for a while seemed an awfully good idea.

The second reason was that the less-than-subtle search of our room had unnerved us all, although to be truthful, I was having more trouble dealing with sc.u.m having touched my stuff than Jennifer was. She'd been pacified by a new room and once-laundered clothes, immediately taken care of by Aidan and Sheila, the innkeepers, who had, if anything, been more upset than we were. I, however, found myself surrept.i.tiously making my way to a laundromat to wash everything for a second time. A little s.p.a.ce between me and whoever had trashed our room at The Three Sisters Inn seemed a good idea too.

I suspect Rob thought that keeping me away from the Dingle, and the Byrne family treasure hunt and ensuing murder investigation in particular, and his daughter from Padraig Gilhooly's sailing cla.s.ses, was also an excellent plan. He would therefore have been disappointed to learn that my reason for going to Dublin was to pay a visit to McCafferty and McGlynn, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and that after seeing Jennifer off at the gates of Trinity College on a two-hour walking tour of historic Dublin, I headed directly there.

Eamon Byrne had said the two solicitors, or legal bookends as he'd referred to them, had become too accustomed to the good life in St. Stephen's Green to refuse him any request, and I could see that would be easy enough to do.

Their offices were located in a town house on the square right in the heart of the city. The exterior was pure Georgian, white, with a cheerful red door flanked by two columns, and crowned by a magnificent arched fan light above. Similar town houses, each entrance just a little bit distinctive, stretched out on either side, and all around the square: doors in every color imaginable from black to yellow to pink to lilac, some with similar fan lights, others with sidelights. A bra.s.s knocker on this one matched the discreet nameplate, C. B. McCafferty and R. A. McGlynn, Solicitors.

The door opened into a foyer of black and white marble floor tiles, black urns and white walls, with lovely decorative rococo plasterwork on the ceiling. A bust, vaguely Roman looking, a Caesar, perhaps, occupied one corner. It was as if one had entered the town home of a wealthy Irishman in the middle of the eighteenth century, the only jarring note the receptionist's computer and telephone. Jarring or not, McCafferty and McGlynn were doing quite nicely, thank you, that much was clear.

Straight ahead of me was a staircase. For some reason, this reminded me that at one time in the royal courts of England and Europe, one's worth was reflected in the room in which one was received at court. The closer one came to the monarch's private chambers, the more important one was. I wondered if I'd make it up the stairs.

As it turned out, I got as far as the second of four floors, if I'd counted stories correctly as I'd approached from the street. Not that my progress there was entirely effortless. I had decided upon a surprise attack and came armed only with a letter from Alex, coconspirator that he was, but no appointment.

"I know this is really presumptuous of me," I said to the receptionist, a young woman with perfect fingernails, which she obviously worked on most of the day. "I'm sure that Mr. McCafferty and Mr. McGlynn are both extremely busy, but I'm in Dublin quite unexpectedly and must soon be off back to Canada, and I was wondering whether there might be any chance I could have a few moments with one or the other of them. I have some questions about Mr. Alex Stewart's inheritance from the Eamon Byrne estate." I hoped I sounded suitably contrite for this serious breach of legal etiquette. Up until the words "Eamon Byrne," she'd been regarding me with considerably less interest than her fingernails, but those, apparently, were the magic words. "Both Mr. McGlynn and Mr. McCafferty are with a client," she said in upper-crust vowels she obviously worked hard on. "I'm not sure when they'll be free."

"I'll wait," I said, plunking myself down on a very fine wing chair in the corner of the room. She looked at me for a moment or two and then reluctantly picked up the phone. What followed was one of those conversations in which the secretary pretends she is talking to an a.s.sistant when she is, in fact, talking to one of the lawyers. "There is a Ms. McClintoch here from Canada wis.h.i.+ng to speak to Mr. McCafferty or Mr. McGlynn about Mr. Byrne's estate," she said. There was a pause. "No, she does not have an appointment." Another pause. "Yes," she said. "One of the solicitors will try to work you in," she said, hanging up the phone. "You may wait upstairs. You might want to have a look at this," she added, handing me an engraved card which listed McCafferty and McGlynn's fees for various services. They were, in a word, breathtaking.

After pa.s.sing this first hurdle, I went upstairs to the library, an attractive room on the second floor, with walls of blue, stripped back to the original coat of paint, by the look of them, and lined with legal tomes by the yard. The centerpiece of the room was a marble fireplace that sported two carved rams heads, one on each side of the mantelpiece, and over it, a somewhat Italianate fresco of a country scene, probably dating to the early- to middle-eighteenth century. On the walls to either side of the fireplace, white plaster plaques depicted a blindfolded Justice, appropriately enough, robes flowing, scales in balance.

A large table had been placed in the middle of the room under an interesting chandelier with blue colored gla.s.s sprinkled through it to match the walls. It was here, I decided, that the lawyers or their a.s.sistants did their research, judging from the volumes in piles on the surface, seated in carved and intricately decorated armchairs that I believe are sometimes called Chinese Chippendale. Several choice mezzotint portraits had been hung on the walls, and placed about the room were some rather handsome pieces of furniture. Every piece was exquisite and chosen with impeccable taste or, to be more precise, taste very similar to mine.

A lovely period, Georgian, I thought. Some of the decorative touches were a trifle ornate for my taste, but overall the proportions were so pleasing, everything so elegant, I was quite enchanted.

My favorite object of all was the attractively worn Aubusson carpet. I like old carpets. They make me wonder about all the feet that have crossed them, the conversations that have taken place above them, the ghosts that still haunt them. This one was particularly fine in that regard, a worn patch where some heavy furniture had been placed for a long time, the hint of a well-travelled path, from one room to another perhaps.

Whoever had renovated and decorated the place had done so with meticulous attention to detail, a real sympathy for the Irish Georgian style, and a thoroughly lavish budget. I could only just imagine how much it would cost to accomplish the look. It was very impressive, and a little intimidating, and I decided this was intentional. If the fee schedule you were given upon entry to the building didn't deter you, then this room might prove an effective winnowing process for all but the spectacularly financially endowed or, like me, the profoundly stubborn. After a few minutes here, one would be either impressed and prepared to pay big for Tweedledum and Tweedledee's clearly exceptional services, or would have skulked away, convinced one couldn't afford them. I stayed the course, hoping I wouldn't have to take out a second mortgage on my house, or worse yet sell my half-interest in Greenhalgh & McClintoch, to pay the fees.

After several minutes of cooling my heels and being suitably cowed by the decor, I heard footsteps and voices coming down the stairs from above, someone more important than I, apparently, then a few minutes later, footsteps coming up the stairs, and Deirdre entered with the tea tray. We were both surprised to see each other.

"What are you doing here?" she gasped, cups rattling and the tray precariously balanced. I immediately remembered my promise in Dingle Town that I wouldn't follow her to Dublin. But how was I to know?

"I'm here to see one of the solicitors about Alex Stewart's inheritance," I said in my most soothing tones, reaching out to steady the tray. "It's lovely to see you again, Deirdre. I'm delighted to see that you've been able to find some employment right away. I hope everything is working out well for you."

"Yes, thank you," she said regaining her composure. "Would you like a cup of tea and a biscuit?" She poured tea from a silver tea service into two faintly iridescent cream-colored cups, Beleek most likely, mine clear, and another drowned in milk. Seconds later, the solicitor entered the room.