The Celtic Riddle

As we went over the side, I grabbed hold of Jennifer, but I hit the water so hard, I was dazed for a moment, and she was wrenched from my grasp. There was a roaring in my ears, either the shock of the water or the underwater sound of the powerboat, and my nose and mouth were filled with water as I was swept up in the wake. I struggled my way to the surface and looked about for the others. I saw Alex immediately, but Jennifer was nowhere to be found. A panic so intense it was almost a physical pain gripped me, and I started screaming her name and flailing around in the dark, cold water, desperate to find her, a glimpse of her purple jacket, or her blonde hair.

And suddenly there she was, first her head, then her shoulders, she rose coughing and sputtering, a few yards away. "Gip!" she gasped, shaking her fist at the departing trawler, already far away, a small black shadow retreating in the shimmering path of the sun on the water. "Mucs!" she yelled again, this time much stronger. I figured she was okay.

Together, we tried to right the boat, but it was difficult, exhausted as we were by our narrow escape, and in the end we just clung to the side of it, waiting until help arrived. It came mercifully soon in the person of Michael Davis who pulled alongside not long after in a small motorboat.

"I saw you from the cliff," he said after he'd hauled us all on board and attached a line to the sailboat to tow it to shore. "Bloody ijit driving that boat!" he exclaimed. "You could all have been killed!"

"Did you happen to see who the bloody ijit was?" I asked him, after I'd caught my breath.

"No," he replied, but he looked away as he said it. I had a feeling that even if he couldn't actually see, at that distance, who was driving the boat, he had a very good idea who was responsible. And recalling vividly the malignant look on Conail O'Connor's face, so, for that matter, did I.

Chapter Four. A STAG OF SEVEN SLAUGHTERS

APPARENTLY you were right," Rob said, nodding in my general direction as he passed his daughter the marmalade. Breakfast was served each morning in a little glassed-in porch overlooking the little garden at the Inn, and we started our days together there.

"I'm always right," I said, as Jennifer giggled. Alex raised his eyebrows skeptically.

Rob chuckled. "That may be, but I don't often admit it, now do I?"

"That's an understatement," Jennifer teased. Rob made a motion as if to box her ears, and she ducked, laughing.

"What particular instance of my being right are you referring to this time?" I asked. I was happy to see Rob and Jennifer getting along so well, and that she was beginning to speak English in its normal order once again.

"John Herlihy," he said. "Blood/alcohol readings over the top. Guy had been drinking for several days solid. It's a wonder he could stand up at all, but people who drink pretty consistently can be like that."

Now I'm always glad when Rob agrees with me about something. I like to think that on the important things in life we pretty much agree right down the line. On the smaller details, however, we hardly ever see eye to eye. It's the source of bouts of bickering from time to time. Sometimes, I think we carry on like an old married couple, even though we've never been anything more than friends. Having him admit I'd been right in this instance was, indeed, a victory. Trouble was, in the meantime, I'd changed my mind.

"What about the other things you talked about: marks on the body, that sort of thing?"

"According to the garda I spoke to, pleasant chap by the name of Minogue, Herlihy's injuries are pretty consistent with having fallen forty feet onto a pile of rocks," Rob said. "All rather neat and tidy, actually. After all, they can pinpoint the time of death with great accuracy. You walked by the spot minutes after the proceedings at Second Chance ended, that is about three-thirty, and about forty-five minutes or so later, by all accounts, you walked back, and there he was. His clothes were wet, from the rain presumably, under the body too, although that doesn't mean much on the seashore. He might have been lying down there when you first went by, I suppose-you wouldn't necessarily have seen him-but it's more likely he fell during the rain. Either way, it doesn't change the time much, and during that time, everyone is more or less accounted for, not every second perhaps, but no one was alone for very long."

It wouldn't take very long, I thought to myself, just a short jog to the edge of the property and around the corner where no one could see. And from our end,Michael had been gone rather longer than I had thought necessary to get a little fuel for the fire. "What about the other stuff? Footprints? Signs of a struggle?"