The Celtic Riddle

I looked about me. The boat's owner was nowhere to be seen. I found my shoe and carefully picked my way across the rocky shore toward the skiff, which was just offshore under a large underhang of rock. The boat, as far as I could see from land, was absolutely empty. I thought I should take a better look. After all, if this was the answer to the first clue, there might be something in it that would lead us on, a note stuck in a fishing basket or something. A little voice was telling me that I was forgetting my resolve to stay out of this game, but I ignored it, the tumble down the hill having robbed me of good sense.

The water was too deep and the boat a little too far out for me to wade out to it, so I thought I'd try something else. I carefully scrambled up a large rock on the shore, hoping from its height to have a better view of the inside of the boat. It was, as I'd thought, completely empty, without so much as an oar to be seen.

As I looked about me from the vantage point of the big rock, I saw at the foot of a steep rocky cliff toward the end of the cove, what looked to be a shoe, partially hidden by a large rock. Perhaps it's floated ashore, I thought, lost overboard on a yacht, or something. But as I climbed down the rock and moved toward it, I had a flash of recognition, followed by a sense of being in the grip of a terrible dream that I couldn't stop, a dream that impelled me, slowly, unwillingly, toward the shoe. When I got there, I saw the shoe was attached to a leg. And the leg belonged to the broken body of John Her-lihy.

Chapter Three. THE ROAR OF THE SEA

I'VE been thinking," I said. This was cause for deep relief for me, thinking again I mean, after a couple of days of walking around in a kind of shocked and vacuous haze in which even the slightest mental effort seemed beyond me. I was still feeling a little shaky, as if I'd seriously overdosed on caffeine or adrenaline, and jumped at every loud noise. But I felt at last as if I was starting to come around, all things considered, the shock of finding John Herlihy gradually fading. Apparently, however, Rob was not as keen as I was on my return to relative mental acuity.

"Why do I think this is going to be trouble?" he groaned, setting two foaming pints of Kilkenny cream ale in front of us on the small glass-topped table in the bar in the inn where we were all staying. "We're on vacation, remember."

"I know," I replied, thinking that this was not exactly the vacation I'd been hoping for, thanks to John Herlihy's unfortunate demise. "But we came over here to keep Alex company, and this is about Alex. What I've been thinking," I continued before Rob could stop me, "is that it might be kind of fun to look for this treasure, this item of great value that Eamon Byrne talked about."

Rob made a face. "Bad idea," he said.

"Why?" I said.

"You have a rather short memory," he said. "Shock, I suppose, although imminent middle age can do that to you too. John Herlihy. Dead. Cause of death still under investigation."

"But he fell," I said. "Drunk as a skunk, if you ask me.

"Something of a tippler, you think?"

"It went way beyond tippling," I replied. "I overheard Deirdre of the Sorrows refer to Herlihy as the old souse."

"Am I safe in assuming that you are referring to someone other than the Deirdre of J. M. Synge's unfinished play by that name?"

"Deirdre, the morose-looking maid," I said, "and don't try to distract me with your erudition." Although I have known Rob for a few years now, comments such as these never fail to amaze me. I know I'm guilty of a gross and unfair generalization when I assume policemen don't read playwrights like John Millington Synge, particularly when the only policeman I know, at all well, does.

"So you're assuming he just fell over the edge in a drunken stupor, are you?" Rob asked. There was a tone in his voice that meant I was in for a bit of a lecture. "You can't just assume that, you know," he went on, launching himself fully into the topic. "You have to investigate it thoroughly. Did he just fall, or is there any evidence to support a suspicion that he was pushed, or even that he threw himself over the edge? Footprints, signs of a struggle, marks on the body, that kind of thing."

"I thought you said we were on vacation," I interjected.

He laughed. "Hard to get out of the work mode, isn't it?"

"Not for me," I replied blithely.

"So you weren't eyeing any of the furniture in that fellow Byrne's manor house, thinking you just might pick up a piece or two if they were auctioning any of it off now that he's gone?"

"Nope," I replied.

"Didn't you say he was something of a collector? You didn't think a few items in his collection might find a home in your shop?"

"Not at all," I replied. "Objects of destruction on red velvet are not quite the look we strive for at Green-halgh McClintoch." Well, maybe one or two of those maps, I thought to myself.