Erin Hart - Lake of Sorrows

“I have Ursula and young Charlie to thank for that. And you.” He reached into his coat and pulled out the drawing he’d taken from the cottage. “When the Brazils came to me with their proposition, I was naturally skeptical about the gold collar. But Danny Brazil was clever. He knew it probably wasn’t wise to go around showing off the real artifacts, so he made drawings of every object they’d found—even the ones they hadn’t shared with the museum. Quite an expert draftsman, wasn’t he?

“After Danny disappeared, Dominic tried to tell me that there had never been any gold collar, that it was just a ruse. But Danny had made this wonderful drawing, you see. I had a hard time believing he’d made the piece up. I used various methods of persuasion to get Dominic to tell me what really happened. I’d almost given up hope—almost. Isn’t it strange? This summer I was going to make one last stab at Dominic Brazil. That’s why I arranged to meet Ursula. She was a good cover, a plausible excuse to be here. And then Ursula’s crew very conveniently stumbled over Danny Brazil’s body. Wonderful timing.

“I have to say that one of the qualities I actually admired most about Ursula was her tenacity. Once she’d found Danny Brazil’s body, she just kept worrying those old rumors of illicit gold, hoping something would shake out. And eventually something did. She found several of Danny’s drawings here. Charlie had them tacked up on the wall in that shed. Didn’t even know what they were, poor sod—but Ursula did. She couldn’t wait to tell me about the collar drawing with a strange bunch of circles on the back. I was coming out to take a look at it. But Ursula was sloppy. She let your friend Maguire walk off with the drawing that night. I watched him take it, not knowing it was in the bloody book. I was there, outside the house, the whole time he was with Ursula.” His features took on a slightly sardonic sneer. “What did he tell you—that she attacked him and he fought her off? Not that it matters very much at this point, since you won’t be seeing him again, but that wasn’t exactly what it looked like to me.”

Nora said nothing. She knew he was just testing her, trying to see what would provoke a reaction.

“So what were all the circles on the back of the drawing?” she asked. She tried to keep Quill’s back to the shed, in case Brona might be able to make a move, but there was no sign of the girl. Maybe she was too frightened, or maybe she didn’t understand that she ought to run for help.

“It was a map of this very spot, the nine hives, although a person might not recognize it if he wasn’t a bit familiar with the area already.”

“Why did you take Cormac’s waterproofs?”

“Why not? He’d already done himself in by going over to Ursula’s that night. And they provided another handy diversion, a way to get the Guards sniffing around him and leaving me alone.”

“How did you get into the cottage? The doors and windows were all locked. I checked them myself.”

“Doors are only locked against people who don’t have keys. Ursula told me where the key was hidden, outside the back door. She’d been there dozens of times; she sometimes used it as a trysting place when the owners were away. Very careless of them, leaving the key there—and not like Mrs. McCrossan at all. Ah, no, Mrs. McCrossan likes to do the smart thing, the prudent thing.” His tone was contemptuous.

“How do you know Evelyn?” Nora asked.

Quill’s eyes flashed. “Just couldn’t stay out of it, could you? Couldn’t let things run their course. Everything would have been settled, Dominic Brazil would have taken the blame for the murders, your friend would eventually have been let off for lack of evidence, and everything would have gone back to the way it was before. One brother pays for the death of the other. Everything comes back into balance.”

“And what about Ursula and Rachel? How do you balance their deaths?”

“They were necessary sacrifices. I’m afraid you’re looking for saints, hearts of gold where there were none. Beneath her damaged exterior, Ursula Downes was nothing but a vicious, drunken slag. I was actually quite fond of her, but that is the truth. And did you even know Rachel Briscoe? She came into Ursula’s house that night with a knife drawn. I’m sure she would have slit Ursula’s throat in a heartbeat—if I hadn’t done it already. She saw me and tried to get away. It took me until last night to find her, the daft little bitch. I gave each of them something more: a triple death. A perfect death.”

Nora stood still, hoping for a chance to reach for the dagger, as he drew closer. Quill reached up and put his fingers around her throat. His face was only inches from hers, and she knew he could feel the pulse beneath her skin.

“I’ll be sorry about you, Dr. Gavin. I’ve actually enjoyed talking with you. And not everything I told you about Ursula was a lie.” Quill’s plummy voice resonated in his chest; she could feel its vibrations traveling through his flesh and bones into her own. His eyes regarded her without feeling.

If she could create a distraction, maybe Brona could escape. She reached up and felt Quill’s fingers around her throat. Her voice came in a hoarse whisper: “Don’t you want to know what gave you away?” She let her eyes slide down to the triskelion design on the pin that held his tie in place. “You were wearing that same tie pin in the newspaper pictures taken after the discovery of the Loughnabrone hoard. Is it real, or a replica? You must be very attached to it, to have worn the same piece for twenty-five years. That’s how Ursula knew you were involved, and that’s how I figured it out as well.”

Quill’s lips curved in a mirthless smile. “Aren’t you clever? Ursula thought she was clever, too, thought she’d outwitted me.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Do you know what her grand plan was? First of all, she assumed that I had murdered Danny Brazil. Her plan, if you could even call it that, was to use the paltry evidence she’d scraped together to blackmail me—as though fear of exposure would be enough to make me do whatever she wanted. All she wanted was enough money to buy a one-way ticket to someplace warm. She thought all this was about money.”

“So if it’s not about money, what is it about?”

“I doubt you would understand.”

“Let me try. If you’re going to kill me, you owe me some sort of explanation. I want to understand.”

He moved behind her, tipping her head back and looking down into her eyes. His upside-down face looked distorted and strange. “You know, somehow I believe you do. But how do you explain something that isn’t based in reason? Look out there—” He tipped her chin down again and gestured toward the lake and bog that stretched before them. “You might as well ask for reasons from the earth, the water, the wind.

“It grieves me when people talk about an artifact only in terms of its monetary worth. As if its significance can be quantified, reduced, vulgarized in that way. I used to work in museums, and now they depress me unutterably—the contents of votive hoards, fallen from powerful talismans to mere trinkets and curiosities, and all those throngs of bored schoolchildren and gaping tourists trooping past, sullying sacred objects with undeserving, jaded eyes.” He held up the collar with his free hand. “Can anyone be blamed for wanting to keep this from them? Apart from its exquisite form, an object like this is nothing less than a window through which we can gain access to a mind that grasped the most astonishing and sophisticated concepts. The person who created it worked in a miraculous material that never decays, never corrodes. He shaped it truly believing that his inspired creation would confer superhuman power on the person who wore it. Who are we to disparage his beliefs? We carry them within us still. What is Christianity but blood sacrifice masquerading as modern religion? We’ve lost our faith in the world around us, in our own deeper selves—in the sacred connection between blood and death, the places on earth that can lead us deeper within ourselves. The destruction of this bog is a case in point. I detest that superior attitude we hold today toward ancient people; it releases a kind of fury in me. You probably can’t understand that, can you?”