Chain of Evidence (9 page)

‘I’ll bring something across to your own house,’ she began as soon as Mara dismounted and handed her horse over to the stable boy.

‘No, no, I’ll have something here,’ said Mara hastily. The Brehon’s house, a two-storey stone building, stood a couple of hundred yards away from the law school. It was nice to be able to retire there after school was finished and to leave the scholars to the care of Brigid and Cumhal, but now she was eager to get on with solving this mystery. Bran came across to greet her and she fondled him absent-mindedly. Garrett, she remembered, hated dogs. He was, she had often thought,
actually
frightened of Bran. Would a man who was nervous of a friendly, well-trained wolfhound, actually voluntarily go out on the road to confront a herd of stampeding cows? Not in a thousand years, she told herself. Even glimpsed from the mountain there had been something terrifying about the look of them hurtling down the road, maddened by blows and shouts and by the primeval instinct to be first.

‘Have something solid in you,’ said Brigid firmly when Mara asked for a glass of milk. ‘I’ve got some nice little goat’s cheeses, just got them this morning from Tahra MacNamara.’ Brigid’s hands were busy as she stripped the green leaves from the succulently oozing fresh cheese, placed it on a slice of fresh soda bread and then slid it on to the hot griddle plate that hung over the kitchen fire. Her eyes, however, were on Mara as she repeated with emphasis, ‘It was Tahra MacNamara that I got these from, Brehon.’

Mara roused herself from her thoughts. ‘And what did she have to say about the death of her
taoiseach
?’ she enquired obligingly.

‘She had plenty to say.’ Brigid’s face bore the expression of one who has plenty to say herself and Mara waited. Tahra MacNamara was a gossipy old woman who carried tales from house to house as she bartered her excellent goat’s cheese for food or firing.

‘She said that the clan all guess what happened to the
taoiseach
,’ hissed Brigid, giving a dramatic glance at the open doorway and then closing it rapidly. ‘She says that it was that wife of his that pushed the poor man under the feet of the cattle and then went back into the castle and left him there.’

‘Oh,’ said Mara. She was rather taken aback at that.

‘And they do say, according to Tahra, that the clan want revenge on her. Her being from Galway and English and all that, or so Tomás MacNamara says and he’s a clever man; mind you, he is the grandson of that fellow Sean MacNamara who held the townlands up there at Creevagh and made a fortune from digging lead out of the ground. There used to be very strange tales about him and what he got up to at Creevagh – he was the one that dug out the sunken passageway to the dolmen. But Tahra says Tomás is good, steady man and Cait his wife is a hard-working woman. And she’s birthed seventeen children and reared seven sons and three daughters from them.’

‘Seventeen children, oh my goodness!’ exclaimed Mara. ‘And she’s a little small woman, isn’t she? If I were she, I would have felt like murdering my husband by the end of that.’

Not a sentiment to be uttered by a Brehon, she thought a minute later; and so Brigid told her immediately citing the example of a woman of Galway who was executed for killing her husband.

‘And, mind you, Brehon,’ said Brigid with emphasis, ‘according to the man that told me, she only did it because he kept beating her and starving her and she couldn’t get rid of him in any other way and she was forced into it . . . and . . .’ Brigid paused to gulp in some breath and finished rapidly: ‘And do you know what those
dúnmharfóirí
in Galway did to the poor woman? Well, they tied her to a stake and they burned her to death.’

‘And do the clan want something like that to happen Slaney?’ enquired Mara innocently.

Brigid nodded emphatically. ‘Well, people think that she should be punished, Brehon. I’m not saying that is what the clan thinks should happen to the
ban taoiseach.
Tomás says that the clan want revenge; that’s what Tahra said,’ ended Brigid, dissociating herself, with the last words, from the bloodthirsty statements from the MacNamara clan.

‘Revenge,’ repeated Mara. The heated goat’s cheese had begun to smell delicious, but she felt that she had lost her appetite for it. It was true that Slaney was not truly Gaelic. Her family was one of the merchant families in Galway, alien to Gaelic laws and customs, although they had spent hundreds of years in Ireland. Nevertheless, she was married to the
taoiseach
of the MacNamara clan and had spent four years in the kingdom of the Burren. A feeling of anger rose within her at the thought of the clever Tomás laying down the law. She would soon show him who was in charge of legal matters in the kingdom of the Burren, she thought and attacked her goat’s cheese and bread with assumed relish.

‘Delicious,’ she said aloud, but she hardly tasted what she was swallowing rapidly. Her mind was busy. Murder of husbands or wives was a very rare occurrence in Gaelic Ireland because divorce, with an equitable division of property agreed between both, was so easily granted. It was, in fact, easier for a woman to get a divorce from a man, than the other way around. And as the woman was considered to be a partner to the man, her share of the property would usually amount to about half of what they jointly owned. Mara thought back through her years as Brehon, and through the incidents from her father’s time, and could not remember a single case when a wife had murdered her husband.

‘Do you think that you could call the scholars back into the schoolhouse, Brigid?’ she asked after swallowing a gulp of milk and then cutting off another piece of bread and forcing herself to swallow it. She would need all of her energy if there was going to be trouble at the MacNamara castle.

‘I’ve sent Fachtnan to Thomond to fetch Nuala,’ she said as her housekeeper went to the door and watched Brigid’s face turn back and then grow soft with affection. Nuala had no parents of her own, but she had been the daughter of Mara’s cousin Malachy and of Mara’s best friend Mór, a sister to Ardal O’Lochlainn. Nuala had been an only child, unhappy at home after the death of her mother and had spent much of her childhood and girlhood at the law school. Brigid had mothered her and the boys had been like brothers to her.

‘I’ll make up a bed for her in the guest house,’ was all that Brigid said, but Mara could see the satisfaction on her face as she went out. She would be pleased, also, that Fachtnan had been sent to fetch the girl. It was her dearest wish that the two would be married.

One thing at a time, thought Mara as she finished her milk and handed the rest of the goat’s cheese and bread to Bran. Resolutely she pushed the information from the gossiping Tahra to the back of her mind and focussed on the chain.

‘The chain,’ she said as soon as they were all seated; Hugh and Shane, the two youngest, directly in front of her, and Fiona, Moylan and Aidan on the table behind them. She had begun to think of a reason herself but she wanted to give them the opportunity of guessing. Shane’s eyes were sparkling with excitement and Hugh was looking at him with a smile. The two older boys and Fiona looked annoyed when Shane’s hand went up, so they were obviously not in on the secret.

‘Yes, Shane,’ said Mara. She was not surprised. At present, though the youngest, he was certainly the cleverest of her scholars. He rose politely to his feet and looked around at his fellow pupils.

‘I thought it might have been possible that Garrett MacNamara was unconscious before the chain was tied around his leg and that he was dragged down and then left in the middle of road as the cattle were stampeding down the hill.’

‘Put the case,’ growled Aidan.

Fiona raised her hand, but Mara shook her head. ‘Let Shane put the case, first, Fiona, and then you can debate.’

Shane passed a hand over his black hair and turned his dark blue eyes on her. ‘If someone wanted to murder Garrett,’ he said, ‘he or she could knock him unconscious, tie a chain around his leg, drag him down onto the road and leave him there in the path of the cattle. In reality, then it would mean that it was the cattle who murdered the man.’

‘Wouldn’t stand up in a court of law,’ muttered Aidan. ‘Who ever set him down in the path of the cattle was guilty of murder. Anyone would know what would happen if that huge herd of cattle trampled an unconscious man.’

‘If I may speak,’ said Fiona sweetly, ‘I would like to say that I don’t think my learned and juvenile friend is quite correct in his surmise.’

‘Well, go on then, if you’re so clever, what’s your guess?’ Shane dropped back onto his stool and glared over his shoulder at the girl scholar.

‘Well, use your brains,’ snapped Fiona. ‘The Brehon asked us to come up with a reason for the chain being tied around the dead man’s leg. You haven’t given a reason. Our murderer – let’s call him or her OM – well OM could just as easily have grabbed Garrett by the legs or even by the hands and dragged his body down on to the road. The chain would just have been a nuisance.’

‘But it was pretty clever of Shane to think of Garrett being probably unconscious before he was trampled down,’ said Hugh in hot defence. Hugh and Shane were near in age and had been friends ever since Shane had joined the law school five years ago. Mara could never remember an occasion when this particular pair had fought with each other.

‘I’ve got it,’ said Moylan suddenly. ‘The body was dragged down onto the road – we should go and see the exact spot, Brehon, shouldn’t we? The O’Lochlainn could come with us and show us where he saw it – he was the one who brought news to the castle, wasn’t he? – but from memory there are lots of rocks on the side of the road leading up to the castle, so the unconscious body was placed in the middle of the road and just in case the noise of the cattle hoofs roused him, then a chain was tied around his leg and the other end was tied to one of the rocks.’

‘And then if he got to his feet, most likely feeling sick and giddy, and tried to run, then the chain would jerk and he’d fall down and a minute later he would be pulp,’ said Fiona slowly. ‘Moylan, you’re a genius. I think that you’ve got it.’

‘It was Shane’s idea, first,’ said Hugh hotly while Shane shrugged, but looked annoyed, more with himself for not thinking the idea through, than with Moylan for coming up with a more plausible solution, thought Mara. Shane had a formidable intellect and a calm disposition.

Aloud, she said, ‘You’ve all helped, well done. That sounds a very plausible explanation and we will keep that as a working hypothesis for the moment.’

‘So OM picks up something heavy, bangs Garrett over the head,’ said Aidan. ‘Then OM ties a piece of chain around his leg—’

‘No, no, OM does that when Garrett is in the middle of the road!’ interrupted Fiona.

‘Perhaps Garrett groans or something and OM thinks, Oh my God, he’s going to wake up,’ put in Shane.

‘Drags him down, with or without the chain, ties him to a stone, dashes away and then gets back into the castle or
somewhere
,’ finished Aidan.

‘So who is OM?’ asked Hugh looking around at his fellow scholars.

‘I don’t think that we should speculate about that just yet,’ said Shane. ‘I do see a few problems in our hypothesis. If we knew the exact spot, then we’d know better, but I was thinking that OM took quite a risk What if someone looked out and saw someone dragging a body down the hill?’

‘And then arranging it in the middle of the road and taking time to attach the chain to a rock.’ Hugh looked at this friend and received a nod.

‘There’s a worse problem than that,’ said Fiona suddenly. ‘The O’Lochlainn said nothing about a chain being tied to a rock – he would surely have noticed it. The cows might have broken the chain, but they wouldn’t have untied it from the rock. I think that we should go up there, Brehon, and search the spot where the body was found.’

‘I agree,’ said Mara. ‘I was going to wait until Nuala came but now I think, like you, that we should search the area quickly before any evidence is moved.’

‘Probably too late,’ said Moylan gloomily. ‘Shall I go and ask the O’Lochlainn whether he would accompany us to Carron, Brehon? We’ll need him to show us the exact spot. I’ll be very polite and say we will await his convenience,’ he added quickly before she could reply.

Mara smiled at him. Moylan was growing up and turning from an awkward, silly schoolboy into a polished young man. He would, she thought, undoubtedly pass his final examination in June and then she would see if she could find a position for him. The Brehon of Beare, a kingdom in south-west Ireland, was looking for an assistant lawyer, she had heard. Aidan might perhaps have to have another year and then he and Fiona would graduate.

‘Also we should check if any windows from the castle overlook the spot where the body was found,’ said Fiona when Moylan had departed. ‘Rhona, the Scottish woman, told me that most of the MacNamara clan were staying on at the castle for a few days after the funeral of the
tánaiste
because they thought there would be some sort of celebration after Peadar was declared to be the son of Garrett. And –’ she paused for effect – ‘she told me, too, that, when she and Peadar left the castle to come over to Poulnabrone, Garrett and his wife Slaney were in the bedroom shouting at each other at the tops of their voices. She decided not to wait for Garrett as it would be embarrassing if Slaney came out and shouted at her – it would upset Peadar and she’d had a hard job persuading him not to go back to Scotland. He hates Ireland; he wants to go back to Scotland where he was working in an abbey garden and learning about herbs and things’ finished Fiona.

‘Quarrelling?’ queried Mara.

‘Actually fighting,’ confirmed Fiona. ‘Rhona was laughing about it. She said that she heard what was probably a stool being thrown across the room and that she thought Garrett was getting the worse of it. She could hear him cry out a couple of times as though he were hurt, but thought she shouldn’t interfere.’

‘I’d say that Slaney is heavier than the
taoiseach
is,
was
I mean,’ said Hugh, correcting himself and suppressing the chuckle that had been in his voice when he began to speak. ‘I was forgetting that he is dead,’ he added in a subdued manner, looking rather ashamed of himself.