Erin Hart - Haunted Ground

As he moved about the rooms, Cormac wondered where Nora had got to, and saw her talking to Devaney in a corner of the library. Going about his work, Devaney always seemed so self-assured, but here he had the uneasy look of a man not used to socializing, at least in situations where there was neither pint nor fiddle in his hands. When Cormac approached, they were talking about the cailin rua.

“So you’re hoping the bones from the souterrain will come up a match?” Devaney asked.

“Malachy Drummond is helping us with it right now,” Nora said.

Cormac addressed Devaney: “We found some evidence that the red-haired girl from the bog might have actually been”—he lowered his voice, not wishing under the circumstances to broadcast such news to every soul within hearing—“executed for the murder of her newborn child. But Nora doesn’t believe it.”

“I realize we may never find anything conclusive,” Nora said. She looked through the open door into the dining room, where Hugh Osborne stood by the window, accepting condolences. “I just think we ought to get all the information we can.”

The morning after the funeral, Nora was packing her case when her mobile phone began to chirp. It was Malachy Drummond.

“I have some interesting news,” he said. “First, the skeletal remains of the adult from your souterrain were a conclusive match for the head found at Drumcleggan Bog. The vertebrae matched exactly, as did the blade marks on the bones. I’m as positive as a pathologist can be that they’re the same person.”

“I knew it,” Nora said under her breath, and at the same time, she felt slightly ill as she thought of the cailin rua putting a hand over her infant’s mouth and nose until it lay still. She didn’t know if the murdered child was a boy or a girl. There was no mention of its gender in the account Raftery had provided. “Thanks, Malachy, I appreciate you taking the time.”

“Hang on. That was only the first bit; there’s more. The museum has some sort of arrangement with one of our colleagues at Trinity. McDevitt’s his name, a chap from the genetics department. He’s working on a database of mitochondrial DNA. Anyway, he came to take a sample from your two specimens while I had them in the morgue, and we got to talking about his research.” Nora was listening, but her mind was already turning over the possibilities of what Drummond was about to reveal.

“It’s fascinating stuff. In addition to DNA, he’s also collecting surname information. Taken in conjunction, his data will eventually produce a map of genetic diversity in Ireland, as a first step in making inferences about population origins. I told him you might have evidence about this girl’s identity, and he said he might like to phone you about it when you get back. I gave him your office number; I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, that’s fine, Malachy.”

“So as we were working, I told him the whole story, how this young woman’s head had been found in a bog, and that you’d turned up evidence that she may have been executed for the murder of her child, very possibly the same infant who was found alongside her in the souterrain.” Drummond paused for breath. “I thought no more about it. But then McDevitt phoned me, just a few minutes ago, with some very curious results. The mtDNA sequences of these two individuals were completely different. There’s no possibility that they were mother and child. They’re not even distantly related. Isn’t that curious?”

Nora couldn’t answer, as her mind tried to take in the enormity of what she had just heard.

“Hello, Nora? Are you still there?”

“Malachy, you’re sure that’s what he said? Not related?”

“He said the evidence couldn’t be more distinct.”

“How is that possible?” She wasn’t really talking to Drummond, but trying to fix the contradictory information in her mind. “So if the child wasn’t hers, whose was it?”

Nora carried her case downstairs, where Cormac was waiting for her, and Hugh Osborne walked them out to the cars in the drive. Cormac’s jeep still bore a few scars from Brendan McGann’s attack; the rear window was temporarily repaired with clear plastic sheeting.

“I owe you both so much,” said Hugh Osborne. “I’ve spoken to Jeremy. He’s going to come back home here when he’s released. I know it may be difficult, but I can’t just abandon him. Mina would never have wanted that.”

“If there’s anything at all that I—that we can do—” Cormac said.

“I fear I’ve already asked far too much.”

At 9:15 P. M. on a rainy Thursday night the following November, Cormac Maguire slouched on the sofa in his sitting room, reading. The front window was streaked with rain, but a small turf fire glowed in the grate, and he realized that he had never before experienced such a remarkable feeling of fullness and serenity.

Six months ago, feeling wrung out from a week of difficult conversation with his father, and weary after the long drive from Donegal to Dublin, Cormac had pulled up in front of his own house. He’d sat in the car for a while, studying the dark windows, contemplating whether he could ever return to the solitary life he had studiously built for himself behind them. The car window had been open just enough to admit the seductive scent of some unidentifiable flower. Whether it was the prompting of that sweet fragrance itself, or the prospect of the different sort of life it suggested, Cormac did not know, but he’d turned the key in the ignition and made his way through the narrow Dublin streets until he arrived outside Nora Gavin’s flat.

She opened the door as if she’d been expecting him. The time that followed was almost like a dream now. A smile tugged at Cormac’s lips when he remembered that those three intoxicating days with Nora were the first time he had felt not like a bystander in his own life, but a full participant. Now he looked down at her stretched out beside him with her head resting in his lap, appreciating the warmth and the intimate landscape of her body, the curl of her ear, the soft wisps of dark hair against her pale skin. This sleep was a good thing; she was exhausted. In the months since they’d returned from Dunbeg, she had kept searching, digging through records of Irish assizes and transportation records at the National Archives in Dublin and the Public Records Office in London, trying to find out more about Annie McCann and Cathal Mor O’Flaherty. Her search had so far borne no fruit, and it seemed at this point that she was completely stuck. Cormac tried to imagine the energy Nora had devoted to the investigation of her sister’s death, and knew that she’d not given up in that quest either. He no longer believed that evidence of the cailin rua’s true story existed, but he’d stopped trying to convince Nora. He found her tenacity extremely touching.

The phone on the desk began to ring, but Nora appeared to be sleeping soundly, and he decided to let the answerphone pick up rather than disturb her. After the tone, he heard a familiar deep voice: “Ah, Cormac, it’s Hugh Osborne. Something’s turned up here I think you and Dr. Gavin would be interested in seeing. I was phoning to see if you might come down for the weekend—and if you’d bring along any information you’ve got on the red-haired girl from the bog.”

The charred tower house was the first thing Nora spied through a tangled veil of wet black branches. Next spring the ivy would twine its way up the walls once more, but now in the bleak and waning November afternoon, it was a gaping ruin, collapsed even further by the rotting damp that had set in on its ancient, blackened timbers. The crows had reclaimed it as their own. Cormac craned his neck to see through the rain-streaked wind-screen, and she slowed to a stop to give him time to absorb the picture as well.