The Book of Killowen (Nora Gavin #4) (21 page)

Claire Finnerty looked up. “Glad you could join us this evening, Dr. Gavin. Where are your compatriots?”

“Just back from the bog,” Nora said. “Getting cleaned up. They said not to wait.” In fact, Niall and Cormac were just returned from the hospital, after depositing the ancient leather satchel they’d discovered at the crime scene this afternoon—a detail they’d asked her not to share in company just yet. She turned to find the archaeologist, Shawn Kearney, coming through to the kitchen behind her, accompanied by a bushy-bearded man in his forties.

Claire Finnerty said, “I don’t think you know everyone.” She presented Nora to the new people, Lucien and Sylvie Picard, Diarmuid Lynch, and Shawn Kearney, who laughed and said, “That’s all right, Claire. Dr. Gavin and I have already met.”

“As have we,” Martin Gwynne said, with a gesture to include his wife as well. “In the studio this afternoon.”

Claire waved at the far end of the table. “And this is our neighbor, Deirdre Claffey.” Nora recognized the girl from the chipper van yesterday, now clapping the pudgy hands of the child she held on her lap.

The long table was laid out with hand-thrown stoneware, woven linen place mats and napkins, and candles, along with a heavenly smelling pan of something under bubbling red sauce. There was an impressive-looking cheese plate and three unlabeled bottles of red wine. Through the glimpses she’d gained these last couple of days, Nora was beginning to form an impression of life here at Killowen. It seemed both profoundly simple and elegantly sufficient—growing the bulk of your own food, using the rest of your time for creative pursuits. Here it seemed possible to imagine a proper sort of balance. Compared to this, the rat race of life in the city suddenly seemed seriously out of whack.

Anthony Beglan slipped in the garden door and removed his cap, the whiteness of his high forehead contrasting with the weathered cheeks. Difficult to tell his age—he looked to Nora like some of her grandfather’s mates, men who had worked farms in Clare for fifty years or more, never married, and had no one to whom they could bequeath the fruit of their labors. Was Anthony Beglan also the end of a line? He sidled into the room and stood next to Deirdre Claffey and her baby.

Claire looked around the room, gathering everyone in with her eyes. “Just so you’re all aware, we have another couple of visitors as of today. Mairéad Broome is in her usual cottage. It’s a dreadful time for her. I know you’ll all respect her privacy.”

“So it was her husband in the boot of that car?” Shawn Kearney sat at the table and popped a mushroom from the salad into her mouth. “That detective was asking everyone—”

“I think that’s a subject we’d better leave right there for the moment, Shawn,” Claire said, casting her eyes discreetly in the direction of Deirdre Claffey, who stopped playing and sat with her arms wrapped around the baby, much to his displeasure. He tried to squirm away, but Anthony Beglan began to mug and dance, lifting the cap in front of his face in a game of peekaboo. Nora wondered whether Deirdre Claffey was a regular guest here—or perhaps tonight was unusual?

Claire took a seat at one end of the long table and motioned Nora to take the opposite place. Martin Gwynne took the seat beside Nora. “I hope you like aubergines,” he said. “I must admit I never did, until Lucien and Sylvie applied a few secret herbs and tomato sauce. Try this.” He held a steaming forkful to Nora’s lips. She took the offering and tasted an explosion of flavor. Gwynne looked on expectantly. “What do you think?”

His wife said softly, “For heaven’s sake, love, let the poor girl enjoy her meal in peace.”

Nora had to admit that she had never been convinced about eggplant—until that moment. “Mmm,” she managed, groping for the appropriate word.

“Fantastic,” said Gwynne. “Isn’t it?”

“Ah, non, non,”
said Lucien, waving off the compliment.
“Pas du tout.”

Joseph and Eliana came through from the sitting room, and Joseph took the other chair beside Nora. “What’s a dingo?” He pointed at her plate. “Your eeking.”

“Eggplant,” Nora said. “It’s eggplant parmigiana.”

“Upland,” Joseph repeated. “Ugglamp—good.”

The food made its rounds of the table, and when Cormac and Niall Dawson finally arrived and took their places, the only sounds in the room were the clinks of serving spoons and the low murmur of voices.

“Shawn, you mentioned last night that you’re an archaeologist,” Nora said. “Are you doing excavation work here?”

“Not at the moment. But that’s the reason I came here last April. With the new heating system going in, my company got the contract for the archaeological survey, to see if anything might turn up in the excavation.”

“And what did you find?” Nora looked up to see a worried look on Niall Dawson’s face.

“Well, plenty of pits and postholes that fit with what we already knew about the site,” Shawn said. “From the name, Cill Eóghain, Owen’s Church, you know it’s a monastic settlement, and there’s even a brief mention in the
Annals of the Four Masters
. The postholes we found showed pretty typical early Christian wooden structures—although there is a beautiful tenth-century stone chapel over beside the orchard—”

Niall Dawson jumped in. “You know how surveys go, Nora—a lot of digging and not much to show for it.”

Shawn Kearney looked curiously at Dawson and continued. “We did find one really spectacular piece—a metal stylus, the sort used on wax tablets. And that’s how we met Niall—when he came down to take the stylus back to the museum.”

Nora felt the pull of several threads at once. “You’ll have to pardon my ignorance. What’s a wax tablet?”

“Notepad of the ancient world,” Shawn Kearney said. “Until the advent of cheap paper, they were the best—well, really, the
only
—temporary writing surface. Suppose you wanted to scribble something down—a poem, a shopping list, whatever. You’d take a flat wooden board and carve out a shallow reservoir, and into that you’d pour melted wax. Once it cooled, you could scratch down your thoughts in the wax. And when you didn’t need whatever you’d written any longer, you could just rub it out and start again. People used them right up to the nineteenth century in some places.”

Cormac added, “The fragments of writing that have turned up on tablets are amazing—Greek, Latin, Old Irish—sometimes they’ve even found the writer’s fingerprints in the wax.”

“And the stylus was the writing instrument?” Nora asked.

“That’s right,” Shawn said. “Most would have been made from wood, but there were metal versions, too, some quite elaborately wrought.”

Cormac asked, “Where did you find it, exactly?”

Shawn pointed out through the French doors. “Just down below the garden outside. We left a stake at the findspot.”

“This part of the country would have been fairly rotten with monasteries at that time,” Cormac said. “You’ve got Birr only a short distance from here, and Clonmacnoise and Sier Kieran. How did Killowen compare, do you think?”

Shawn Kearney shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t quite as important as any of those places, obviously, but there was an interesting mention in O’Donovan’s notes for this area.” She turned to Nora. “You know about John O’Donovan, the famous nineteenth-century antiquarian?”

Nora nodded, and Shawn continued. “Well, he made a note about a curious figure carved into the doorway of Killowen Chapel—”

Glancing at Niall Dawson, Nora thought she detected a shadow passing over his face.

“Yes,” he said. “That was a fascinating twist.”

Shawn Kearney continued, gesturing with a chunk of eggplant on the end of her fork. “—And he was able to tie it to the mention of a monastic settlement called Cill Eóghain in the
Annals of the Four Masters
. Usually with those sorts of carvings, you might see the monastery’s founding saint, or a bishop with his miter and crozier, but this one was different. I’ll take you over to see it tomorrow, if you like.”

“Yes, I would like,” Cormac replied. “Especially as Niall has neglected to tell me a single word about any of this. Did O’Donovan happen to mention any manuscripts associated with this place?”

Shawn Kearney turned to Gwynne. “Martin can probably answer that better than I can. He’s our resident manuscript expert.”

Gwynne cleared his throat before speaking. “Well, any early medieval scriptorium worth its salt would have been turning out Gospels and Psalters and sermons—”

Shawn Kearney interrupted, “But I believe the monks at Killowen may have been copying and translating works by Greek and Roman writers.”

“And what makes you think that?” Cormac asked.

Shawn Kearney offered a mysterious smile. “That’s what I’m going to show you tomorrow. I’d hate to ruin the surprise.”

The baby began to squawk at the end of the table, until Tessa Gwynne said, “Give him to me, Deirdre. I’ll mind him while you finish your dinner.” The girl handed over the child, who seemed glad to have a new playmate. Tessa began making faces and poking the baby’s belly to make him laugh. Nora glanced at Martin Gwynne and caught him
observing his wife with what she could only describe as a mixture of compassion and consternation. What was their story?

“I enjoyed seeing your work today,” Nora said to Martin Gwynne. “Plenty to pass on to your apprentice. Tell me her name again—was it Áine? No, Anca.”

Gwynne suddenly looked acutely uncomfortable, and Claire Finnerty said, “Oh, yes, she was from Romania. We’ve had loads of international volunteers—WWOOFers, they’re called—after the group that matches us up, World Wide Opportunities in Organic Farming. Most stay only a few weeks, but Anca was with us a long time—nearly nine months, I think. We were sorry to see her go. She left over a month ago now, wasn’t it, Diarmuid?”

“That’s right,” came the reply. Lynch’s shaggy head lifted as he turned his gaze toward Dawson. “Six weeks ago.”

Without warning, the kitchen door slammed open with a loud bang, frightening everyone, but especially the baby, who began to wail. Vincent Claffey stood in the doorway, fists at the ready and practically breathing fire. “What have I told you?” he shouted at Deirdre. “I told you to stay away from this place. Have nothing to do with those fuckin’ hippies, I said. So what are you doing over here again?”

He moved to Deirdre and seized her by the arm, but Claire Finnerty jumped up to intervene. “Leave her alone.”

Claffey looked daggers at Claire. “Shut your trap. You’re the cause of all this. She’s my daughter, and I’ll do with her what I fuckin’ like.” He pushed Claire out of the way. She fell against Diarmuid, who’d risen from the table as well. The baby’s cry turned into a terrified shriek, but Tessa Gwynne held on tight.

“Come on,” Claffey said. “We’re going. You, missus, give her the child,” he said to Tessa, shoving his daughter sideways.

Deirdre nearly stumbled as she went to collect the baby. “I’m all right,” she murmured to Tessa as she reached for the child and settled him on her hip.

“Will yeh shut up!” Claffey shouted, making the girl flinch. “This crowd don’t give a flying fuck about you, my girl.”

“And you do?” Claire Finnerty’s eyes blazed.

Claffey turned to her and smiled. “Don’t you go gettin’ any ideas, because I know your secrets, the lot of yez. Think you’re safe out here, far from prying eyes? But I know, I
know
.” He tapped his temple and leveled
a warning gaze at each one of them, as each, in turn, looked away. In the eerie silence, he took hold of Deirdre’s free elbow and walked her straight out the door, not pausing to shut it after them.

Claire Finnerty was the first to speak. “Bastard!” She straightened up and separated herself from Diarmuid, trying to regain a little dignity, but her hands were shaking. “We’ve got to get Deirdre away from him.”

“Yes, but how?” Martin Gwynne’s voice betrayed a helpless frustration. Clearly this was not their first confrontation with Claffey. “If no one’s actually witnessed an instance of abusive behavior, and Deirdre refuses to talk about it . . . ”

“I’m sorry, but wouldn’t you call what just happened here ‘abusive behavior’?”

A loud sob escaped from Tessa Gwynne. Her husband pushed his chair back and circled around to her. “Don’t fret now, love, we’ll find some way to help the child.” But Tessa would not be consoled. Martin Gwynne helped his wife to her feet and led her out the open door.

“Poor Tessa,” Shawn Kearney whispered. “She and Martin had a daughter who died, so it tears her apart to see Deirdre treated like that. She just can’t take it.”

Nora looked across the table, directing Cormac’s attention to his father. Joseph had Eliana by the hand and was squeezing hard. His grip was strong, as Nora knew from experience, and the poor girl looked stricken. Cormac reached out and placed his hand over his father’s. “Will you let go, please? You’re hurting her.” Joseph looked down at his own hand as if it belonged to someone else and slowly loosened his grip, his eyes imploring Eliana’s forgiveness.

Up and down the table, everyone stared glumly at their plates, poking at the formerly delicious-looking parmigiana with their forks.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Claire Finnerty said to Nora. “As you’ve probably gathered, we’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with the situation.”

Claffey’s dark threats cast a new meaning on the scene Nora had witnessed earlier in the day, the handover of the brown envelope by Mairéad Broome’s assistant. In addition to being a cruel father, Vincent Claffey might be a brazen blackmailer who’d just terrorized everyone in this room. Nora observed the faces around the table. What dangerous secrets could any of these people have to hide?