Lake of Sorrows

“It’s just a bee sting. I’m fine. I’ve put ice on it, and the swelling’s already starting to go down. I found out some things about Charlie Brazil that I don’t think anyone knows. He’s got a stash of what I’m fairly sure are illegal artifacts hidden somewhere up near his apiary. It makes me wonder if Ursula’s death isn’t somehow tied to all that.” She decided not to mention that she’d actually met Charlie on the expedition, or Cormac might lose sight of what was most important here—finding some connections in this ever more vexing puzzle.

“How do you know all this?”

“I was just looking around in the shed where he stores his beekeeping supplies, and I saw where he’d hidden the other things under the floor. He doesn’t know I was there. I found this, too.” She flipped through the pages of the book where she’d hidden the stolen drawing. The pages opened to the place where the postcard-size drawing lay facedown, but when Nora turned the paper over, it was not the same picture as the one she’d slipped into the book. It showed some kind of intricately decorated circlet, though whether it was a bracelet or a necklace was difficult to tell from the scale. The thick paper had been pierced by a pin about a half-inch from the top, just like the drawing she had found in the shed.

A wave of nausea swept over her, and her fingers suddenly felt clammy and cold. Turning a few more pages, she found the shield sketch she’d put in the book and compared it to the new drawing. Both were clearly the work of the same artist.

Cormac was close behind her now, looking over her shoulder. “What are those, Nora? Where did you get them?”

Nora felt her breath catch in her throat as she wrestled with how to respond. The question seemed in earnest. How else could she answer him? She held up the shield drawing. “I found this one in Charlie Brazil’s beekeeping shed this evening. And this one"—she held up the sketch of the circlet—"I just found here in your book.”

He seemed to grasp the unspoken question even before she could think it. “It’s not mine, Nora. I’ve never seen it before, I swear.”

“How did it get here?”

“That’s the book I lent Ursula. I hadn’t even remembered it. When she stopped by the house the first night I was here, she wanted to know what I was working on. She started looking through the books I was unpacking, and asked if she could borrow that one for a day or two. There didn’t seem to be any harm in lending it to her. Last night I saw it just beside the door at Ursula’s, so I took it back. I put it on the kitchen table when I came in, never even thought to open it.”

Nora thought back to the morning, which seemed so long ago now, and remembered moving the book from the kitchen to Cormac’s work table. She examined the spine. The Exquisite Art: Masterpieces of Irish Metalwork. “Why would Ursula be so interested in this book?”

“I don’t know, Nora. It’s an academic treatise on artifacts and antiquities,” Cormac said. “Pretty dry reading, even for an archaeologist. She didn’t say why she needed it, and I didn’t ask.”

Ursula Downes hadn’t struck Nora as the kind of person who devoted herself to scholarship. There had to be some reason she had been interested in this particular book. Nora opened the thick pages at random, finding photographs and drawings, charts full of numbers that looked like location coordinates, maps documenting where certain types of artifacts—gold gorgets and hoards of bent and broken weapons—had been found. Cadogan’s words about the Brazils holding back some things from the hoard suddenly circled through her head. Had Ursula found out something she didn’t want anyone else to know? I know what you’re hiding…. The discovery of a previously unknown artifact would certainly put a new spin on the murder. And there were three knots in Ursula’s cord, just like in Danny Brazil’s.

“Can I have a look at it?” Cormac took the drawing and the book and started going through the illustrations, comparing the sketch in his hand against the book’s drawings and photographs. “This has a catalog of all the known gold artifacts recovered on Irish soil.”

“So what are you doing?” Nora asked over his shoulder.

He quickly flipped to a page showing a drawing, and held it open to show her. “The Broighter collar, a gold neck-ring from the first century B.C. The style of decoration—these intricate, curving designs—marks the piece as Irish-made. The drawing you found in here seems to be a collar similar to this one. The thing is, I don’t think anything exactly like the piece in your sketch has ever been found in Ireland—or maybe I should say, nothing like it has ever been reported. The Broighter collar is one of the few examples of La Tene metalwork found in Ireland, and one of the few gold artifacts from the Iron Age. You must have seen it at the National Museum. Look at the decoration on your drawing, those raised whorls and trumpet curves—see how similar they are to the Broighter details? It’s astonishing.”