Peter Tremayne - Hemlock at Vespers

“You should have fled while you had the chance, Monchae,” came the masculine growl. “I had no wish to harm you or the old man. I just wanted to get you out of this inn. Now, you must die!”

Fidelma sprang aside once more, feverishly searching for some weapon, some means of defense.

Her flailing hand knocked against something. She dimly recognized it as the alabaster figure of the Madonna and Child. Automatically, her fingers closed on it and she swung it up like a club. She struck the figure where she thought the side of the head would be.

She was surprised at the shock of the impact. The alabaster seemed to shatter into pieces, as she would have expected from a plaster statuette, but its impact seemed firm and weighty, causing a vibration in her hand and arm. The sound was that of a sickening smack of flesh meeting a hard substance.

The figure grunted, a curious sound as the air was sharply expelled from his lungs. Then he dropped to the floor. She heard the sound of metal ringing on the floor planks as the knife dropped and bounced.

Fidelma stood for a moment or two, shoulders heaving as she sought to recover her breath and control her pounding emotions.

Slowly she walked to the foot of the stairs and called up in a firm voice.

“You can come down now. I have laid your ghost!”

She turned, stumbling a little in the darkness, until she found a candle and lit it. Then she went back to the figure of her erstwhile assailant. He lay on his side, hands outstretched. He was a young man. She gave a soft intake of breath when she saw the ugly wound on his temple. She reached forward and felt for a pulse. There was none.

She looked round curiously. The impact of a plaster statuette could not have caused such a death blow.

Fragments and powdered plaster were scattered in a large area. But there, lying in the debris, was a long cylindrical tube of sacking. It was no more than a foot high and perhaps one inch in diameter. Fidelma bent and picked it up. It was heavy. She sighed and replaced it where she had found it.

Monchae and Belach were creeping down the stairs now.

“Belach, have you a lantern?” asked Fidelma as she stood up.

“Yes. What is it?” demanded the innkeeper.

“Light it, if you please. I think we have solved your haunting.”

As she spoke she turned and walked across the floor to the spot where she had seen the figure rise, as if from the floor. There was a trapdoor and beneath it some steps which led into a tunnel.

Belach had lit the lamp.

“What has happened?” he demanded.

“Your ghost was simply a man,” Fidelma explained.

Monchae let out a moan.

“You mean it is Murgán? He was not killed at Loch Derg?”

Fidelma perched herself on the edge of the table and shook her head. She stooped to pick up the pipes where the figure had dropped them onto the table.

“No; it was someone who looked and sounded a little like Murgán as you knew him. Take a look at his face, Monchae. I think you will recognize Cano, Murgán’s younger brother.”

A gasp of astonishment from the woman confirmed Fidelma’s identification.

“But why, what…?”

“A sad but simple tale. Cano was not killed as reported at Loch Derg. He was probably badly wounded and returned to this land with a limp. I presume that he did not have a limp when he went away?”

“He did not,” Monchae confirmed.

“Murgán was dead. He took Murgán’s pipes. Why he took so long to get back here, we shall never know. Perhaps he did not need money until now, or perhaps the idea never occurred to him….”

“I don’t understand,” Monchae said, collapsing into a chair by the table.

“Cano remembered that Murgán had some money. A lot of money he had saved. Murgán told you that if he lost his life, then there was money in the inn and you would never want for anything. Isn’t that right?”

Monchae made an affirmative gesture.

“But as I told you, it was just Murgán’s fantasy. We searched the inn everywhere and could find no sign of any money. Anyway, my man, Belach, and I are content with things as they are.”

Fidelma smiled softly.

“Perhaps it was when Cano realized that you had not found his brother’s hoard that he made up his mind to find it himself.”

“But it isn’t here,” protested Belach, coming to the support of his wife.

“But it was” insisted Fidelma. “Cano knew it. But he didn’t know where. He needed time to search. How could he get you away from the inn sufficiently long to search? That was when he conceived a convoluted idea to drive you out by pretending to be the ghost of his brother. He had his brother’s pipes and could play the same tunes his brother had played. His appearance and his voice made him pass for the person you once knew, Monchae, but, of course, only at a distance with muffled voice. He began to haunt you.”

“What of the shimmering effect?” demanded Belach. “How could he produce such an effect?”

“I have seen a yellow claylike substance that gives off that curious luminosity,” Fidelma assured them. “It can be scooped from the walls of the caves west of here. It is called mearnáil, a phosphorus, a substance that glows in the gloom. If you examine Cano’s cloak you will see that he has smeared it in this yellowing clay.”

“But he left no footprints,” protested Belach. “He left no footprints in the snow.”

“But he did leave some tell-tale sign,” Fidelma pointed out. “You see, he took the branch of a bush and, as he walked backward away from the knoll, he swept away his footprints. But while it does disguise the footprints, one can still see the ruffled surface of the snow where the bush has swept over its top layer. It is an old trick, taught to warriors, to hide their tracks from their enemies.”

“But surely he could not survive in the cold outside all these nights?” Monchae said. It was the sort of aspect which would strike a woman’s precise and practical logic.

“He did not. He slept in the inn, or at least in the stable. Once or twice he tried to search the inn while you lay asleep. Hence the bumps and sounds that sometimes awakened you. But he knew, however, that he could only search properly if he could move you out.”

“He was here with us in the inn?” Belach was aghast.

Fidelma nodded to the open trapdoor in the floor.

“It seemed that he knew more of the secret passages of the inn than either of you. After all, Cano was brought up in this inn.”

There was a silence.

Monchae gave a low sigh.

“All that and there was no treasure. Poor Cano. He was not really evil. Did you have to kill him, Sister?”

Fidelma compressed her lips for a moment.

“Everything is in God’s hands,” she said in resignation. “In my struggle, I seized the statuette of Our Lady and struck out at Cano. It caught him on the table and fragmented.”

“But it was only alabaster 1. It would not have killed him, surely?”

“It was what was inside that killed him. The very thing that he was looking for. It lies there on the floor.”

“What is it?” whispered Monchae, when Belach reached down to pick up the cylindrical object in sackcloth.

“It is a roll of coins. It is Murgán’s treasure. It acted as a bar of metal to the head of Cano and killed him. Our Lady had been protecting the treasure all these years and, in the final analysis, Our Lady meted out death to him that was not rightful heir to that treasure.”

Fidelma suddenly saw the light creeping in through the shutters of the inn.

“And now day is breaking. I need to break my fast and be on my way to Cashel. I’ll leave a note for your bo-dire explaining matters. But I have urgent business in Cashel. If he wants me, I shall be there.”