Lake of Sorrows

There was nothing Nora could do but listen. Of course all the tiny facets of Ursula she’d seen were not the whole picture. But what became of all the other undetectable, irreducible essences that made up any human being, when the person was no longer there? One of the most terrible things about murder was that it made for an unfair summing-up, a life abridged far too soon. She still wasn’t sure why Desmond Quill was telling her all this. Perhaps he hadn’t planned to do so; maybe the shock had been more than he realized. After all, it was only this morning that he had arrived at the house to find that Ursula Downes, his singular vision of the future, was dead.

“I suppose some people would look at Ursula and me and see an old man using a younger woman to regain the illusion of lasting life. I was laboring under no misconceptions, mind you. I’m not young—I’ll be sixty-seven in October—and I understood completely that Ursula had certain needs, certain desires that I might not be able to fulfill. I wouldn’t have stood in her way. She didn’t belong to me; it isn’t—wasn’t—that kind of possessive relationship. But in many ways we were uncommonly well-suited. If only she’d let me look after her, she wouldn’t have been out here again. But she could be terribly willful. Exasperating at times.” He took another swallow of whiskey, and Nora wondered how many he’d had before she arrived. He began shifting the change that sat beside his glass on the table, arranging the coins into triangles, then rows of three, like some elaborate game of noughts and crosses. She watched the elegant fingers moving slowly, surely, deliberately.

“You said you wished there was something you could do,” Quill said. “Maybe there is. You can tell me about her last few days here.” He seized Nora’s hand; she tried instinctively to pull it away, but he held her fast. “I need to find out what happened to her. I’ve got to know.” The muscles in his jaw went taut; then his head drooped toward his chest, and he let her go. “I’m sorry…. Do you know what she asked me, just before she rang off last night? She asked whether I thought three was a lucky or an unlucky number. What do you think she meant by that?”

Nora looked down at the coins on the table, neatly arranged in three rows of three. Just then her mobile began to chirp and vibrate against her hip. She couldn’t answer it, not now; she needed room to breathe and think. She had to get out of here, away from Desmond Quill with his deliberate hands and his disjointed grief and his sweet whiskey breath. She stood up suddenly and said, “I’m sorry, but I have to go now.” Desmond Quill stood as well, at least a head taller than she was, but unsteady on his feet.

When she reached the jeep, she sat in the driver’s seat, flipped open her phone, and retrieved the voice mail message. It was Cormac. “It looks like I’m going to be here another while. Why don’t you go home for now? I’ll ring you again when they’re finished with me.” A pause. “Talk to you later, Nora.” How strange that the device she held in her hand could contain all that was in those final words: disappointment, puzzlement, a plaintive sliver of hope.

9

The conversation with Desmond Quill had unsettled Nora, and she arrived back at the Crosses unsure what to do next. Climbing out of the car, she saw the empty peg where Cormac’s waterproofs had hung the previous night. Where were they now, and why had Detective Brennan been so full of questions about when she’d seen them last? The detectives must have thought they had something concrete; otherwise Brennan wouldn’t have wasted precious time asking pointed questions. Surely they didn’t think Cormac would be that thick—to wear his own protective gear while committing a murder, and then stash it near the crime scene? She thought of him in a windowless interview room, trying to explain what seemed inexplicable, even to himself—why he’d gone to Ursula’s house, how her blood had gotten all over his clothing. Things looked bad for Cormac unless they could come up with evidence placing someone else at the scene as well. And with a prime suspect who had conveniently presented himself on their doorstep—at her insistence, she recalled—would they even try?

After hearing Desmond Quill’s suspicions, Nora was more convinced than ever that Owen Cadogan had something to do with Ursula’s murder. But what was she going to do—phone up Cadogan’s wife and ask if he’d been home all night? Surely the police would do that much. Her statement on its own wouldn’t be enough, of course; they would need hard evidence. Quill said that someone had sprayed paint on Ursula’s windows; maybe there was some way Cadogan could be tied to the scene through that….She knew she was grasping at straws, jumping to conclusions too fast. Maybe Quill’s suspicions had made her too focused on Owen Cadogan.