Lake of Sorrows

She had worked with death almost daily for years, but there was nothing between her and this death, no buffer, no intention on the part of the deceased to become the object of scrutiny, and somehow that made all the difference. Her presence here felt like an affront to dignity. She reached into her jacket pocket, fumbling for her mobile phone, and dialed 999 for emergency services. While the forefront of her mind calmly answered the operator’s questions, under the surface coursed a fearful, dark tumble of thoughts. Her memory replayed the angry gestures between Ursula and Owen Cadogan, his hand around her throat, her fists pushing him away. She remembered the confrontation, the threats Ursula had made to Charlie Brazil. But what was the pile of peat supposed to mean, unless—Nora’s stomach churned when she thought of the strange way Danny Brazil had met his death. She leaned over the tub again to look at the still corpse beneath the water, and this time she saw the thin leather strand that encircled Ursula’s throat, its dark line broken by three knots.

2

The house and yard were swarming with Guards. Soon they would be replaced by scene-of-crime officers going over the minutiae like white-clad ants, carrying bits of evidence away to their own anthill. Nora sat waiting to give her statement to Detective Ward, wishing that they would just let her go home. She wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed, to go to sleep and wake up again, start the whole day over, and find this nightmare vanished.

“Thank you for staying, Dr. Gavin. We’ll eventually need to get a detailed statement from you, but at this point it would be helpful if you could just tell me what happened this morning. What made you decide to stop and look in here?”

Nora’s mind went back to the moment she’d seen the open door. What synapse made a person do or not do something? What if she hadn’t seen the door standing open, or it had been open to a lesser angle? Would she have noticed, or flown past as she’d done all the previous days she’d been here? Had knowing this was Ursula’s house made her more observant? “I don’t know, really. I saw the door standing open, and I thought it was odd. I thought something might be wrong.”

“Did you know who was stopping here?”

“Yes, I knew that Ursula Downes was staying here for the excavation season.”

“How did you know?”

For some reason she felt a bit nonplussed. “Cormac Maguire told me last night.”

“And how did he know that this was Ms. Downes’s residence, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Why did she mind the question so much? “I’m not sure how he knew. He never mentioned their acquaintance specifically, but I believe they knew each other from years back. Archaeology is a small field. Everyone knows everyone.”

“I see,” Ward said, and Nora knew he was making a note to put Cormac on his interview list. “Why don’t you take me through what happened, from the time you saw the open door?” His brown eyes were not unkind, and she told herself that he had to be open to every possibility—even those that seemed extremely unlikely. Of course he had to look at Cormac. He’d probably have to interview everyone within a five-mile radius. She took a deep breath and plunged in, recounting all the details she could remember: the broken window, the drops of blood on the kitchen floor, the wine bottle on the table, her panicky journey down the corridor, and the jangling fear she had felt pushing the bathroom door open with the tire iron. She couldn’t seem to go on.

“I’ll let you go very soon,” Ward said, “but I have to ask you, Dr. Gavin, where you were last night. Perhaps you’d oblige me, and go back to the time I left the house after talking with you and Dr. Maguire.”

“We ate dinner after you left, then Cormac took me to the top of the hill behind the cottage. That was when he pointed out all the neighboring houses.”

“And then?”

“We came home and went to bed. ”

“What time would you say that was?”

“About ten forty-five, I suppose, maybe eleven.”

“So you were together the whole evening, and all night?” When Nora looked up at him, he tried to reassure her: “Absolutely routine questions; I don’t want to assume anything. I just need the facts.”

“Yes.” Nora thought of the clear evidence she’d seen this morning that Cormac had been awake and moving about the house.

“You didn’t wake up in the night? Didn’t go to the loo, or to get a glass of water?”

She wondered if Ward could see her hesitation. “No, I’d been working out on the bog all day, and I was exhausted. I didn’t wake until the alarm went off this morning.”

“How well did you know Ursula Downes, Dr. Gavin?”

“Not well at all. I only met her a couple of days ago, out on the bog. We hadn’t really spoken very much.”

“And what about Dr. Maguire? How well was he acquainted with Ursula Downes?”

“As I said, they may have worked together some time ago. I don’t really know.”

“I realize you’ve been here only a few days, but in that time, were you aware of anyone who may have wished her harm?”