Lake of Sorrows

Nora hesitated again. “I don’t know about wishing harm; I can only tell you about things I witnessed.”

“Go ahead,” Ward said, interested.

“Ursula didn’t seem to be on especially good terms with Owen Cadogan, the bog manager. I saw them talking on a couple of occasions, and neither was what you’d call a cordial conversation. At one point, Cadogan had his hand around Ursula’s throat. I couldn’t tell if he was threatening her or not, and when I asked whether everything was all right, she basically told me to back off and mind my own business. The next day, when Cadogan arrived at the site, Ursula tore into him. I don’t know why; I couldn’t hear what she was saying. And she hit him, a slap in the face. She seemed absolutely furious, but you’ll have to ask Cadogan why.”

“Anything else?”

Nora watched Ward noting all this in his book. If she was so willing to tell him everything she’d witnessed between Ursula and Owen Cadogan, why not mention the conversation she’d overheard between Ursula and Charlie Brazil?

“If that’s all—”

“It isn’t, actually.” She might regret this but it was too late now. “I also overheard a conversation a couple of days ago between Ursula and one of the Bord na Mona men, Charlie Brazil. She had—” It was going to sound ridiculous enough, without mentioning how Ursula had wrestled him to the ground. “She said that she’d been watching him, that she knew what he was hiding. And it seemed as though she was threatening to expose whatever it was if he didn’t do what she wanted.”

“And what was that?”

“She wasn’t really specific. She just said that he should come and see her, after dark.”

Ward took all this in impassively, making a few notes in his book. “Anything else?” Nora shook her head, wondering why it was that she had left out Ursula’s reference to Brona Scully. She told herself she couldn’t be positive, and for some reason she felt a fierce protectiveness toward a girl she’d never even met. “You can go home now if you wish, Dr. Gavin. If you wouldn’t mind coming down to the station this afternoon, we can finish taking a complete formal statement then. Thank you for your cooperation.”

As Ward made his way back to the house, Nora saw one of the Guards at the gate turn to address someone approaching from the road. The lanky stranger had blunt, handsome features—a slightly flattened nose, down-turned lips, and a square jaw—and his short steel gray hair was combed straight back over the crown of his head. He wore a long gray raincoat that reached below his knees, and carried a black attache case. Another detective? Not likely. He didn’t seem like a reporter—too mature and too well-dressed for this sort of assignment—and it was a bit early for that, in any case. She heard the young Garda say, “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t let you in without an okay from the boss.”

“Where’s Ursula?” the man in the raincoat asked. “Has something happened to her? Tell me what’s going on here.”

The officer looked at the attache case. “You her brief, sir?”

The man looked at the young Garda as if he’d never encountered a greater class of imbecile. “No, I am not her ‘brief.’ Is there someone in charge of you here? I insist that you let me speak to the officer in charge.”

Ward had evidently overheard and strode toward them. “Detective Liam Ward. I’m in charge of the scene. And you are—”

“Desmond Quill. I’m a friend of Ursula’s, and I demand to know exactly what’s going on here.”

“If you’d step this way, Mr. Quill.” Ward’s calm demeanor withstood the waves of anger directed toward him. The two men stopped a short distance away, and Nora watched Ward speaking very quietly to Quill. There was a brief silence, then Quill’s head tipped forward and the case he gripped in his left hand dropped abruptly to the ground. Ward reached out to steady him, but he pushed the policeman’s arm away, rubbing his brow with one hand as the other, the one that had held the attache case, slid up and down his side as if searching blindly for his raincoat pocket.

3

Nora drove in stunned silence back to the Crosses. She felt her right foot pushing too hard on the brake, as if she could stop time and back up to the previous evening when she had stood wrapped in the aura of that magical tree, when, for one brief shining instant, everything had seemed so right and possible.

When she pulled in beside the cottage, it seemed impossible that she should be reaching to open the car door, entering the house. All these mundane, thoughtless acts seemed somehow surreal after the bizarre and terrifying tableau she had just witnessed. And yet it was all real, all of it: Ursula’s blood on the wall was as real as the birds in the trees outside the windows, as real as Cormac sitting at his desk inside the cottage. He stood up as she came through the door.

“Nora, what are you doing home? Is everything all right?”

“I never made it to the bog. I only got as far as Ursula’s house. She’s dead, Cormac.”