Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

“Yes, what about him? Is it true what they’re saying, that he was murdered?” Sylvie set her plank down on the counter and began loading her cheeses into a box. She avoided eye contact, concentrating instead on her task, her hands moving quickly, efficiently. Sylvie was careful to grasp each round of the soft cheese very gently so as not to damage it.

“Did either of you happen to know Kavanagh?” Stella asked. “Here’s a photograph, in case you might recognize him.”

Her cargo safely stowed at last, Sylvie looked up at the picture. “No. I’ve never seen this man. I’m sorry.”

“We think he disappeared sometime in late April, so I’m asking everyone at Killowen what they recall from that time. Anything out of the ordinary.”

Lucien and Sylvie regarded each other briefly, and Stella got the impression that they had already conferred about what they were going to say. Difficult to tell if she was reading the signals right; it was always slightly disconcerting when interview subjects spoke a language with its own nonverbal nuances.

“Out of the ordinary?” Picard made a wry face. “Difficult to say, because you see, there is no ‘ordinary’ here. Every day is different. That last part of April, we were making the chèvre, Sylvie, do you remember? The soft goat cheese, also crottin and pyramide .” He held up his hands to describe the shapes.

“We also had many, eh… Lucien, qu’est-ce que ‘chevrette’ en Anglais? ”

“ ‘She-goat,’ je crois. ”

“Many of our she-goats, they were having kids at the time. So much to do.”

“We didn’t sleep a lot,” Lucien added.

“Did you have any guests or artists in residence at that time?”

Lucien squinted, trying to recall. “A few, I suppose. I can’t remember. Claire would have their names, if you need them.”

“Do you happen to know the name Mairéad Broome?”

“Yes, the painter. She has been here a few times.”

“And was she one of the artists who were staying here at the end of April?”

“You know, she might have been. As I said, Claire would know for certain.”

“And you know that she was married to Benedict Kavanagh?”

“I didn’t know. Sylvie, did you know this?”

She shook her head. “No.”

Once again, Stella got the distinct impression that a certain amount of forethought had gone into the answers these two were providing. Why should anyone lie about knowing the identity of Mairéad Broome’s husband? The reactions of the people here to Benedict Kavanagh’s death were strange. Each knew less than the one before, as if they were in some sort of competition for who could display the blankest expression, who could know the least about the dead man. She still had three more people to interview: Tessa Gwynne, Shawn Kearney, and Anthony Beglan.

“Thank you. If you do think of anything else, please give me a ring?” She handed each of them a card, wishing she could double back and listen to the conversation that would be in progress a few minutes after she’d left. Of course it would help if she had a bloody word of French.

As she crossed the haggard, there was a clatter of stones that sounded like a wrecking ball had gone through the side of the house. Stella rounded the corner of the barn to find Diarmuid Lynch’s heavy loader driven by a lanky middle-aged man in a brown peaked cap. Beside the pile of stones the driver had just deposited on a patch of meadow stood a woman with short dark hair and vivid blue eyes. Stella glanced at her list. “Shawn Kearney?” she asked.

The woman raised her hand in reply, then removed her dusty leather gloves as her colleague parked the loader and shut off the engine. “Yes, I’m Shawn.”

The accent was American, Stella noted, as she held up her ID. “Detective Cusack. I’m here about the body found in the bog yesterday. You’re the nearest neighbors, so I’m talking to everyone at Killowen. Does the name Benedict Kavanagh mean anything to either of you?”

Shawn Kearney shrugged. “No, I don’t remember hearing that name. Do you, Anthony?”

“Cuh-cuh-can’t suh-say that I do,” he said. His right arm shot out forcefully, as if he was going to land a punch, but he struck at the air. Stella drew back involuntarily.

“It’s all right, Detective,” Kearney said. “It’s just a reflex.” As if to demonstrate, Beglan’s hand shot out twice more, uselessly punching the air before him, and he let out a series of high-pitched squeaks. Shawn Kearney stood by as if this conversation were the most normal thing in the world. Stella had to concentrate on her questions and tried to keep eye contact with both of them. “We’re looking at the last two weeks of April, asking everyone if they remember anything unusual from that time.”

“I was the on-site archaeologist as the new geothermal system was going in,” Kearney said.

“So you’d only just arrived?”

“That’s right. Never set foot on the place before the middle of last April. And now I can’t leave.” She raised her arms, as if astonished to find herself standing in a meadow next to a heap of stones. “Life is full of surprises.”

“You had no previous connection to Killowen before coming to work on the project?”

“No. I was at one of the big contract archaeology firms in Dublin.”

“You’re American,” Stella noted.

“Yes, I got my Irish citizenship after grad school—my gran was from Sligo. Ireland was a great place to find archaeology work—until the economy went to hell. I was lucky to be working when the job here came up, and when it finished, they let me go. With so much development on hold, there aren’t as many jobs. But I made out all right. I love it here.”

“What sorts of artifacts turn up in an excavation at a place like this?” Stella asked.

“There’s not much left aboveground in these early Christian settlements. We did find a stylus, a medieval writing tool. That’s how we met Niall Dawson—he came down to collect it.”

“When was Mr. Dawson here?”

“I put in the call to the National Museum right away, as soon as the stylus turned up. He was here the next day, the twenty-second of April. I showed him around a bit, but nothing else turned up, so he went back to Dublin.”

“What about you, Mr. Beglan?” Stella asked. “What do you recall from April?”

He opened his mouth to speak but instead began to yip like a small dog—once, twice, three times—and then said, “Nothing… strange.” His chin jutted forward and his jaws snapped shut, as if he were trying to recapture the words he’d just spoken into the air.

“Is the name Mairéad Broome familiar to either of you?”

“No, not really,” Kearney said. “But I’m fairly new here.”

“Picka-picka-painter,” Anthony Beglan sputtered. “Often cuh-cuh-comes here.”

“That’s right,” Stella said. “Benedict Kavanagh was her husband.”

Shawn Kearney’s eyes widened. “You think there’s some connection? That’s horrible.”

Stella eyed the loader Beglan had been driving. “Do you use a lot of heavy equipment around here?”

“Just that loader for stones, and the tractor,” Shawn Kearney replied. “Nothing heavier than that.”

“Never have need of a JCB?”

“No. Claire would usually hire out those sorts of jobs. Like when they brought in the digger for the new heating system.”

“Let me ask you, did anyone at Killowen have access to those diggers after hours, when the workmen had knocked off for the night?”

“Not that I recall,” Kearney said. “Besides, you’d have to know how to drive one—”

“I’ve operated a juh-juh-JCB,” Anthony Beglan said. “Not them ones, though. Huh-had their own, that crowd.”