False Mermaid (38 page)

The Irish peasant, hungry albeit he may be, is very particular as regards the description of animal food in which he allows himself to indulge. For instance, I have heard a fisherman object to skate as having a “wild taste,” and have endeavoured without success to convince them that whale’s flesh is an excellent substitute for beef …

I found it far more easy to sympathize with their prejudice against eating the flesh of seals. They have a superstition, a poetical one in my opinion, that the souls of the hapless beings who were drowned in the deluge, entered into the bodies of seals and dwelt there. The plaintive expression which in the eyes of these amphibious creatures is noticeable, lends itself to this fanciful idea …

They are evidently fond of music, and will follow a boat for long distances when the whistle or song of one of the crew attracts their attention. I was once the unfortunate witness of a successful shot which killed a nursing mother as its child, a tiny creature, lay placidly on the parent’s damp and comfortless-looking back. The piteous look of the bereaved one, as it floated past me, was more than human in the intensity of its reproachful despair.

—
“Net Fishing in the Killary Bay,” by M. C. Houstoun, from
London Society: A Monthly Magazine of Light and Amusing Literature for the Hours of Relaxation,
Vol. LVIII, July to December 1890

While Nora was showering after their dip in the sea, Elizabeth crept downstairs to the kitchen, glad to have all that itchy salt off her skin. In her left hand was the seal doll she had stolen from the cottage, tucked under her shirt when Nora wasn’t looking. The black button eye stared back at her, unblinking. She wasn’t even sure why she’d taken it, except that the poor thing seemed to need looking after. She pushed the springy wool back into the open seam at the side of its head, feeling a little uneasy about her conversation with Nora at the cottage. Should she have said all those things about her mother? Her dad said it wasn’t a good idea to talk about the naps mama used to take. He said talking about it could get them all into trouble.

Cormac came in through the back door with a heavy box of provisions. Elizabeth drew back into a corner of the kitchen, dropping whatever it was she’d been holding. He stooped to pick it up—and recognized the seal poppet from the selkie cottage. He studied the creature for a minute before handing it back. “Is everything all right, Elizabeth? Where’s Nora?”

“Upstairs—taking a shower.”

“I’ve got a surprise,” Cormac said, hoping to put her at ease. “Something I hope you’ll find interesting.” Fishing in his box of groceries, he pulled out a flat brown paper bag. “Here’s the first thing we need,” he said. “And here’s the second.” Ducking into his father’s room, he brought out the fiddle case he’d found there earlier. He lifted the instrument from the case and set it on the table. “Can you see our trouble?”

Elizabeth looked closer. “No strings.”

“And that’s what we’re going to remedy, right now.” Elizabeth sat at the table, keeping the seal hidden on her lap as he took out his flute case as well.

“Did you and Nora get up to anything interesting while I was out?”

“We went to a beach. It had all these round stones—”

“Ah—I know the place you mean. It’s called Port na Rón.
Rón
is the Irish word for seal—like your friend there. ‘Port na Rón’ means ‘Seal Harbor.’ People say it used to be a great spot for smugglers and pirates.”

“Pirates?”

“I swear. Those round stones are called
duirlings
. Do you have any Irish?” Elizabeth shook her head. “Would you like to learn a bit?” Her answer was a noncommittal shrug. “All right, say somebody wanted to ask your name. They’d say:
‘Cad is ainm duit?’
”

“Cahd iss AH-nim ditch.”

“Good. And you would answer,
‘Is mise Éilis’
—‘I’m Elizabeth.’ Can you say that?”

“Iss missha AY-lish.”

“Excellent. Elizabeth was my mother’s name, too. But she always went by Éilis.”

Nora came through the door, with her hair still damp from the shower, and evidently surprised to see the instruments on the table between them. “Whose fiddle?”

Cormac looked up. “I found it in the wardrobe, and thought I’d try restringing it—with the help of my able assistant of course.” Elizabeth colored slightly, but kept twisting the fiddle string around her peg. “You’re just in time. We’re about to tune up and give it a go.”

“You don’t even play the fiddle—do you?”

“No—but you learn a few things, hanging around fiddle players.” He took up the flute and blew an A, and looked to Elizabeth to pluck the A string. He showed her how to use the fine tuners to match the note. When the strings were within range, Cormac picked up the fiddle and bowed each pair to check the intonation and handed the instrument to Elizabeth. “All right, your turn now. Let the neck rest in your hand, and tuck the chin rest just under here, like that.” He set the bow between her fingers. “You don’t have to hold it tight. Just relax, keep the wrist loose. Off you go.”

Elizabeth pulled the bow, and the top string made a deep groan.

“Good! Keep going. Just play with it.” He slid down the bench to join Nora, raising a hand to shield his voice from Elizabeth. “You’ll never guess who I met in the village just now—Garrett Devaney.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re joking.”

“He was in the pub. Here for the Fiddle Week with his daughter.”

“That’s strange. I tried to ring him on the way up here, but whoever
answered—his wife, probably—said he wasn’t available. Now I know why. Did you speak to him?”

“Briefly. He invited me for a tune sometime. His daughter is about Elizabeth’s age—a nice player. He asked after you, by the way, but I told him you were gone home to the States. I wasn’t sure what else to say—the walls might have ears.”

“Do you think we could ask them for a tune here—right away, this evening? Frank Cordova—the detective back in Saint Paul—said he’d get in touch with the Guards, to see if he couldn’t get some help tracking Peter. We could ask Devaney to keep his ear to the ground, let us know if he hears anything.”

Cormac reached into his pocket and pulled out a beer mat with a mobile number scrawled in the margin. “Shall I say half-past six?”

Elizabeth was still tentatively trying out different notes on the fiddle. Her plaintive chords summoned up the singing of the seals he’d heard out rowing. Cormac looked down into Nora’s anxious face and offered a hopeful half smile. “What do you know about that? She might just take to it.”

In the end, after hours of interviews, Frank had to spring Truman Stark. The kid still wasn’t telling the whole truth, but there wasn’t enough to hold him—on any charge. And Frank wanted to start checking into Miranda Staunton. He had spent what was left of the night going back into the files for interview records. At the time, they’d seen only Miranda’s glancing connection with Tríona Hallett; her brother was engaged to Tríona’s sister. Miranda had been interviewed twice, and had made all the right noises, provided additional background. She hadn’t even been on their radar as a suspect. With Stark’s statement, all that had changed.

Miranda never mentioned that she was working at the Great Northern Trust Building at the time of Tríona Hallett’s murder. The actual event wasn’t until several months later, but she had been out doing the advance prep work in July. Nobody would have looked askance at her being in the neighborhood. But if she happened to see Tríona, or was actually following her, as Truman Stark claimed …

At ten past seven in the morning, Frank’s phone began to buzz. He dug through the blizzard of papers on his desk to find it. “Cordova here.”

“Holly Blume here, Detective. I think I have something you should see.”

Twenty minutes later, Frank was at the Herbarium, looking through the eyepiece of a microscope at the same shriveled shapes he’d seen at the crime lab.

“That’s the first of the two samples you brought me,” Holly said. “From the separate crime scenes. You wanted to know if we could say from the plant evidence whether any of the seeds or leaves in the two samples were from the same site—”

“And?”

“They are. I don’t know if you recognize those seeds—do you remember the plant Nora and I were talking about the last time you were here?”

“False mermaid—the seeds you identified from Tríona Hallett’s hair.”

“That’s right.
Floerkea proserpinacoides.
Both of the samples you brought me that day happened to contain
Floerkea
seeds. So did the third sample, the one you had sent over yesterday from the crime lab.
Floerkea
has some interesting and unusual properties. Part of the reason the species is so endangered here is that it produces very few seeds, usually only about four to twelve per stem. They’re quite large and heavy, for such a small plant, and they have no wings or hooks, or other features that help them disperse. In population terms, those things can pose a real problem. And to compound that, insects usually reject the seeds, because they contain toxic flavonol glycosides—in other words, they taste awful. What I’m trying to say is that
Floerkea
seeds don’t usually travel very far from their parent plant, not without help. I’m telling you all this as a prelude to the DNA results. I went down to the crime scene, collected additional samples for testing. To do the sort of test you needed, I first had to establish allele frequencies, which alleles are most common within the species, and which are more rare. Does that make sense so far?”

“I think so—go on.”

“I got some good data from a colleague who’s studied
Floerkea
in detail. The upshot is that the seeds from all three of your samples did come from the same parent plant. The DNA profiles are identical.”

Frank had to step back and think for a minute. This new evidence meant they could place Tríona Hallett, and the person who wore Harry Shaughnessy’s shoes, at Natalie Russo’s grave. It still didn’t tell them who’d killed Natalie, or Tríona, but it was a definite connection. Something to build upon, at long last.

“There was something else as well,” Holly said. “I don’t know if they showed you this at the crime lab.” She waved him over to an adjacent bench. “On this first scope, we’ve got Sample A—from the first crime scene sample you brought me.”

“The material combed from Tríona Hallett’s hair.”

“Next is Sample B, collected from your Hidden Falls crime scene. The third, C, is the most recent sample from the state crime lab, from the shoe treads. Take a look, and tell me what you see.”

Frank peered through each lens in turn. “They all look like the same sort of seed.”

“Yes—they’re all false mermaid. What else do you notice?”

“Samples A and C seem to be a slightly different color.”

“Very good. Some of the
Floerkea
seeds from your samples looked like they were coated in a foreign substance. I sent a few back to the crime lab, asked them to check. They just called back. That’s the second bit of information I have for you. The foreign substance turned out to be dried blood—”

“Which means the blood was fresh when the seeds were picked up. So whoever wore Harry Shaughnessy’s spare shoes could be a witness—or a killer.”

“You’re getting there, Detective—congratulations.”

“Thanks, Holly. I owe you for this. Big time.”

“Just doing my job. I’ll write up my results and get them over to you ASAP.”

Frank paused on his way out the door. “Can you hear that?”

Holly peered at him curiously. “Sorry—I don’t hear anything.”

“Listen carefully. It’s the sound of a cold case cracking wide open.”

Nora felt a moment of panic when the bell rang at half-past six. Cormac opened the door to Garrett Devaney, who proffered a bottle of red wine with an apologetic aside. “Only what was on offer at the pub, I’m afraid.”

“It’ll do nicely. Come in.” Cormac ushered Devaney and his daughter into the sitting room. The policeman’s face registered mild surprise when he saw Nora.

“Dr. Gavin,” he said. “Heard you were over in the States.”

“I just got back—and it’s Nora, please. This is my niece—”

“Éilis,” said Elizabeth. “Is mise Éilis.”

Nora had to mask her own surprise. She checked Devaney’s reaction. If he had heard anything official about a missing red-headed eleven-year-old, the policeman showed no sign of it, though he might have looked slightly askance at Elizabeth’s strange haircut.

“My daughter, Róisín,” he said.

Nora watched the two girls eye each other warily. How quickly children learned to take the measure of another person, she thought. Elizabeth seemed especially intrigued by the fact that Róisín carried her own fiddle case.

As they sat down to the table, Nora couldn’t help noticing the deference Garrett Devaney showed his daughter, in tiny, gentle ways—turning the spoon as he passed the potatoes, putting a word in her ear about which cut of the roast chicken might suit. Nora saw that Elizabeth couldn’t help noticing either.

After supper, they took advantage of the long summer daylight to walk over to Port na Rón, stopping at the top of the headland to enjoy the view. The evening was fine, and the rattle of the pebbles on the beach nearly drowned out the faint bluster of the wind. The two girls wandered off, leaving the adults at the top of the headland.

“I’m afraid we had an ulterior motive in asking you for dinner,” Nora said to Devaney. “I’ll just tell you straight out. The police may be looking
for us—Elizabeth and me. She ran away from her father and stepmother when they arrived in Dublin on Friday—”

“Gave them the slip at the airport,” Cormac said. “Took a taxi straight to Nora’s apartment.”

“Only I wasn’t there; I’d gone back to the States last week. Fortunately, I have kind neighbors, who were able to look after her until I could fly over the next day.”

Devaney frowned. “Why did the child run away?”

Nora glanced at Cormac. “I think she found out about her mother. My sister Tríona was murdered—it happened five years ago. Elizabeth was too young to understand.”