Lake of Sorrows

“From a locked drawer in a desk at Desmond Quill’s house in Dublin. There were nearly a hundred photographs of the same woman—some taken a long time ago, like this one, and dozens taken more recently. Some were dated in the past few months.” The chill that had fingered Nora’s spine returned. Ward asked, “Any idea why Quill was so interested in Evelyn McCrossan?”

“Not a clue,” Cormac said, and Nora could only shake her head. One photograph in a jumble didn’t mean anything. Her heart fluttered as she spoke. “I suppose it wouldn’t be too startling if Quill knew Gabriel and Evelyn. He was an archaeologist years ago, and worked at the National Museum; I’m sure he and Gabriel were probably acquainted from way back. And if that was the case, he couldn’t help knowing Evelyn as well.”

“You can always ring me if you think of anything further,” Ward said. “When a suspect dies before the whole case is resolved, there are always these questions without answers. I do appreciate your time.”

As soon as Ward had gone, Nora went to the sideboard, to the box where she’d hidden the photograph of Quill with the McCrossans. She turned it over and read the inscription: Desmond, Evelyn, and Gabriel, Loughnabrone, 1967. She held it out to Cormac. “I found this photograph of the three of them this morning,” she said. “What year were Gabriel and Evelyn married?”

“I think about 1969 or ’70. I’m not exactly sure.”

“But they weren’t married when this picture was taken?”

“No, definitely not.” The question hung between them, unasked, unanswered.

“If they knew each other, I wonder why Gabriel never mentioned Quill. Maybe they parted ways, had a falling out.”

“Over Evelyn?”

“I suppose it’s possible.”

Nora studied the grainy faces in the photo. Did the atmosphere seem strained somehow, as if the two men were vying for the affections of the beautiful girl who sat between them? Quill’s arm snaked up behind Evelyn’s back on the snug cushion—a proprietary gesture. But how could you see the nuances of relationships in a snapshot, a fleeting moment frozen in time? They knew who had ultimately won Evelyn’s affections, and it was not Desmond Quill.

Nora said, “If Quill was interested in Evelyn, then some of the things he said to Dominic Brazil down at the lake—things about losing a treasure worth more than gold—make a lot more sense. Maybe he felt he deserved the collar, as compensation or reparation for some slight he’d suffered. Rejection by Evelyn would be one explanation.”

“Jesus, poor Evelyn. I’m sure she’d no notion about any of this.”

“Now that Quill is dead, surely it’s all over.” Nora slipped the photograph from Cormac’s hand; before he could object she had lit a match under it and cast it into the ashes in the fireplace. She watched the edges curl and blacken. The last fragment of the image to disappear was Desmond Quill’s smiling face. With any luck, Evelyn might be spared the anguish of being Quill’s final, posthumous victim.

2

Cormac dropped Michael Scully and Nora at the hospital’s front entrance, and Nora stood by anxiously as Michael climbed out of the passenger seat. He moved slowly, but she wasn’t sure how much assistance to give, and didn’t know whether he might be offended by the offer of a wheelchair. When they’d made it through the sliding doors into the hospital foyer, Scully turned to her and tipped his head toward several wheelchairs that stood waiting just inside the entrance. “I think it may be a good idea to take a lift in one of those,” he said, “if you wouldn’t mind.”

She went to fetch one of the wheelchairs, and Michael sank into it, exhausted, though he’d walked only about thirty yards from the car. Taking her place behind the chair, Nora looked down at his thin shoulders moving up and down from the effort of breathing, his face showing the weariness of constant pain. His hands gripped the wheelchair’s arms, and she saw the veins standing out between the tendons. They would probably not meet again, after she left this place.

As they approached Brona’s room, Michael Scully raised a hand for Nora to stop the wheelchair outside the door. He looked in at his daughter, asleep in the bed, her injured throat still swathed in bandages. Brona had lost quite a lot of blood by the time they got her to the hospital, so her condition had been critical for the first couple of days, but she seemed to have suffered no brain damage from oxygen deprivation. In the past several days she was much improved, and yesterday they’d found her sitting up in bed. She would probably have a scar, but by some miracle Quill’s blade had missed the major vessels in her throat.

“Let her be,” Scully said. “I can wait a few minutes to see her.” Nora turned the chair around, and they went back down the hospital corridor in silence.