The Celtic Riddle

"John Herlihy, of course. I thought you knew that. I believe that Byrne had instructed him to tell the family eventually if they didn't find it. Eamon was not as heartless as that video might indicate, and he was genuinely hopeful they would all work together. He even told me that Herlihy would get it to them when I told him what I had planned. I suppose he thought that would thwart me. He can't have been thinking clearly, in his weakened condition. John Herlihy merely presented a small, but easily dealt with, obstacle."

"By which I assume you mean you killed Herlihy." It was a statement, not a question.

"I did. Not difficult, even if it never occurred to Eamon that I was capable of it. If it had, I assume he wouldn't have told me. I asked Herlihy to tell me where the treasure was. He wouldn't. It was a simple matter to send him over the side. I lured him to the cliff and pushed him over. Next, no doubt you'll ask about the others. Michael, for example. Michael crept into the house the night he was killed. He was hunting about the place, going through wastepaper baskets and such-I have no idea why he came back nor why he was creeping around."

Would you believe it if I told you he was looking for a tortoise? I thought. And I suppose the destroyed clues.

"In any event, he overheard Deirdre and me-did you realize Deirdre was my aunt, Owen Mac Roth's sister? Yes? When I traced my roots to Connemara, I found her first, working, as you know, in a dry cleaners. It was she who told me the whole sordid story, about how my grandfather had died shortly after my father was incarcerated, having spent the family nest egg on his son's defense, I might add, and how she'd been left alone, without prospects to use that rather antique term, and had sunk to a pitiful state. In any event, Michael heard us talking about my plans, and he was heading off to tell the rest of the family. Unfortunate that. I had killed once, the geis was broken. I killed him too. I actually had the poison with me- I'd got it from one of my less salubrious clients-and had thought to use it on Eamon, although in the end I didn't need to. Called to Michael to stop, that I could explain everything. He did, too. Much too nice and polite a young lad. Death of him, really."

"And Deirdre?"

"She lost her nerve, that's all. She was going to tell you. Unfortunate that I involved her at all, but I had to, you see. I needed someone at Second Chance, so that I could manipulate the strings from far away in Dublin, unsuspected, but still have the information I needed about what was happening there. I sent her back, although she didn't want to go. I wanted her to wreak some more havoc-I thought her statement to police about Conail was inspired, don't you?-and also to keep her eye on you, after your rather insistent questioning of me when you came to Dublin. I made her call me from town every night to report, and so that I could bolster her resolve and keep her anger at the family stoked. But then one evening she didn't call, and I knew what that meant, although I didn't know why."

"Because Eithne Byrne told Deirdre how grateful they were she'd come back and promised to look after her."

"Interesting," he said. "After I got back to Dublin with Ryan, I turned around and drove much of the night to get there before she could do anything, then all the way back to Dublin to be at my office at the usual time. You know, I thought that because she had suffered too, like me, she must want, no need, revenge, that she was the perfect ally, but she hadn't the stomach for it."

I thought of how Deirdre had tried to warn me off, right at the start, out there on the road in the rain. She'd known what would happen to anyone who persisted in looking for the treasure. Charles was right: she hadn't the stomach for what he planned to do.

"Hated to do it, really, to kill her, I mean, but I'd come this far," he went on. "She'd had a hard life. Death might be a blessing for her." He paused for a moment or two, but his eyes never left my face.

"It's important to me that you understand that I do not kill casually or without reason," he said, suddenly. "In fact, I have gone to some lengths to avoid it. I am not a monster. I locked you and your friend up in the clochan to give me time to find the treasure, as you call it, before you did. But you moved too fast. If I had found it and left before you were able to get here, I would have made an anonymous call to the police and they would have sent someone to release you. There would be no need for this," he said, waving the gun in my direction. "The family could look for the treasure forever, as far as I was concerned, as long as there was absolutely no chance they would find it. And now, of course, they won't."

"So are you going to look at it?" I said.