Lake of Sorrows

Another thought struck her as she walked toward the jeep. They might just take a cheek swab or blood sample for typing and DNA analysis, and be finished with him within a few minutes. It would be silly to go home if that were the case. Nora crossed the street and pushed open the door of Coughlan’s Hotel, then the door under a sign with three carved wooden knots that read “Lounge Bar.” Inside was a rather old-fashioned blend of burnished wood and brass, tapestry-upholstered stools and benches. Nora ordered a cappuccino and sat at a table near the bar, stirring a sugar lump into the coffee hiding beneath the white foam.

Three knots. There had been three knots in the cords that strangled both Danny Brazil and Ursula Downes. Maybe that wasn’t the only connection. If only she could get her thoughts to order themselves. She needed a logical plan of action, not this chaotic jumble of half-drawn connections and questions.

She wondered whether the certainty she felt about Cormac’s innocence was the same certainty felt by people whose loved ones maintained their innocence when they really were guilty. Cormac might be guilty of other things—guilty of gallantry laced with stupidity in venturing over to Ursula’s house that night, without a single witness to support his story. Why hadn’t he brought her with him, if he’d only gone to assuage Ursula’s fears? Detective Brennan had done an excellent job of raising all the unanswered questions that had been lying dormant in her mind.

She looked across the bar and saw a half-familiar figure. The man from Ursula’s house this morning—Quill. When people said a man looked distinguished, they meant he looked like Desmond Quill, who had the sort of face that weathered nicely over time. He was probably over sixty, but broad-shouldered and trim, with well-defined, even features, a square jaw, and a full head of silver hair. Something in his upright posture suggested an elegant wading bird, a gray heron. Nora didn’t know the man, but as she approached, the set of his shoulders and the double whiskey in front of him filled her with a spreading ache.

“Mr. Quill?”

He didn’t turn; his eyes only flickered upward briefly, and did not rest on her face.

“You were at Ursula’s house this morning,” he said, his speech noticeably slowed by alcohol. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

She slid onto the bench across from him, and he didn’t object. “Nora Gavin. I’m so very sorry about Ursula. I heard you say that you were a friend—”

“They won’t let me go, you know. Not until their investigation proves that I’m not a cold-blooded killer. As if I—” He rubbed his temple as if massaging a vein that throbbed there, closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose. Nora stared at his crinkled-tissue eyelids, the deep lines in his face that actually enhanced rather than detracted from its attractiveness. “I told them everything I know,” he said. “That she phoned me in Dublin last night, said someone had been bothering her. She didn’t say who it was, only that she was a bit anxious. I asked if she was in any physical danger, and she said—” He couldn’t go on for a moment. “She said she didn’t think it would go that far. I told her I’d be down first thing, to help her get things sorted out. I wasn’t going to let her stay in a place where she might be in danger. She promised to ring the police if anything else happened.” He looked up, his eyes searing into Nora’s face.

“I knew her only briefly. I wish—”

“What do you wish?”

“I wish there were something I could do.”

“Do you know who killed her?”

“No. I mean—I don’t know. You said someone was harassing her?”

“Yes, that’s what she told me. Ringing her at all hours, spraying paint on the windows. I offered to come out here last night, but she said no, nothing would happen, I should wait until the morning. And so I played my usual game of chess, and I lost.”

He lifted his eyes to meet hers, and she felt a sudden transfixion. Then he looked away, as if he’d felt it too. The amber whiskey before him looked thick and sweet, clinging to the clear glass as he lifted it and swallowed. Nora studied the way his Adam’s apple rose and fell above the crisply pressed white shirt. Quill had one of those faces that seemed almost not to have any pores, so fine and fresh was the skin. She looked at his necktie, pulled loose at the collar, but still secured with a very unusual pin: a bronze disc, into which an ancient design had been engraved, a triskelion, a graceful trio of spiraling curves.