As she’d been describing the legendary signal fire St. Patrick had built on the hill where the friary now stood, the fire that had been a challenge to the pagan Irish nobility on the Hill of Tara across the valley, it had occurred to me that the parlor’s simple peat fire, when reflected in the dark eyes of a beautiful woman, was as wonderful as any lit by a saint.
Shortly after that, she’d taken my hand and said, “I’ve one more bed to show you.”
Mullin’s place was on the Newgrange Road — the High Street, the locals called it — and Breda’s stone house on a crooked little lane well down the hill. As I made the left from the street to the lane, a man stepped from a shadowy shop door and said, “We’re a priest tonight, are we?”
Anyone surprised like that on a dark corner in a strange town might have jumped, as I did. Anyone might have been disoriented by the nonsensical question, as I was. But only someone who had studied for the priesthood, as I had once done, could really savor the full potential of the moment.
“I said, we’re a priest tonight, are we?”
The speaker was a big man who seemed huge just then, an ashen-faced man whose skin seemed to glow. He was dressed as most of the men in the pub had been dressed, in a farmer’s version of business casuaclass="underline" a shapeless woolen suit coat over a rumpled, open-neck shirt and baggy pants. The flat cap on his head was pulled low, keeping what light there was from reaching his eyes.
“I bet you treat your vows no better than the old friars did, the lechers.”
Though I couldn’t see his eyes, I somehow knew they were fixed on my chest. And I realized that I was still holding my lapels shut against the damp, making a Nehru jacket of my blazer and creating the illusion of a Roman collar around my neck.
I took my hand away, and my coat fell open. “I’m not a priest, I’m a tourist,” I said, surprised to hear more Guinness than fear in my voice.
“Staying at the Hill of Slane?” the roadblock asked. “Keeping the lady of the house up all night, are you? With your comings and goings?”
Either this stranger had a gift for firing blind or he was unusually well-informed. Supernaturally well-informed, perhaps. Though I was no great believer in ghosts, I found myself wishing I’d asked for a physical description of Tim McKinney back at the bar.
“The thing about tourists is,” the stranger observed, “they move on. Try the west. Try it first light.”
3
My new acquaintance left me then, not dematerializing but simply brushing past me and stomping off into the High Street. I listened to the sound of his angry steps for a time. Then I made my way down the lane to a stone house whose front windows illuminated the sign for the Hill of Slane Bed and Breakfast.
Breda was sitting up for me, as I’d expected. She had some expectations of her own, which a single glance at me confirmed.
“They told you then, did they, Owen? The Mullin’s Pub oral-history society? Told you the whole wonderful story?”
“Not the whole story,” I said.
“Enough, though. More than enough, I can see that. You’re white underneath your African tan.”
She was seated on the little sofa near the peat fire where we’d had our marathon talk. She was barefoot, oddly, since in addition to jeans she was wearing a cardigan sweater as long as a bathrobe, which she held tight around her. The long black hair that had been loose and flowing when I’d left her was now pulled back tight and largely hidden by the sweater’s heavy collar. It was her dead husband’s sweater, I realized with a little shudder.
“If I’m pale,” I said, “it’s the work of a guy I bumped into up the block. You might know him. Size of a small house.”
Breda considered this while staring into the fire. There was nothing childlike about her eyes tonight.
“But they did tell you,” she said. “The drunks in the pub. All about how Tim died. About what he was doing up at the old friary at midnight. And who found out about it and what she did to him. They mentioned the name ‘black widow,’ I’m sure.”
I was still standing one step into the room. Now I crossed to the little sofa and sat down unbidden. Breda made me feel welcome by drawing her sweater tighter around herself and whispering, “The black widow of Slane.”
“What was your husband doing up at the friary the night he died?”
“God knows. He was fascinated by the place. By any old ruins. By any old legend. By ghost stories, especially. He was a ghost chaser, I guess you’d say. It was his great dream to see one. I would much rather he’d been a skirt chaser. I could have dealt with that.”
She looked from the fire to me. “You have the same something in your eyes; I saw it when you came in last night. The same as Tim, I mean. The look of a man who sees things that aren’t there. Who looks for things that aren’t there. Mystical things. That’s what killed Tim: some mystical thing.”
“I heard it was a big rock.”
Breda responded to my bluntness with her wry smile. “There’s nothing more mystical in Ireland than the rocks. The stones. You went to Newgrange today. You took the guided tour. You went down into the heart of that great pile of stone. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel anything, any vibrations.”
“Only claustrophobia.” I was hoping for another smile, however wry. What I got was another question.
“What else did the drinkers say about me, Owen?”
“Nothing. Mullin put a lid on it.”
“The least he could do,” Breda said bitterly, “for the widow of his pet employee. Three months Tim’s been gone and the talking hasn’t stopped. Oh me, oh me.”
She couldn’t expect gossip like that to die in three months. Not in a town without a sports franchise. But I didn’t point that out. I’d been struck by another thought.
“It was your suggestion that I go up to Mullin’s and get a pint. Did you send me there as a scout, to see if they were still talking about you?”
Breda’s pale cheeks flushed. “Maybe I wanted you to hear the gossip so you’d be easier to get rid of. Maybe I wanted to scare you off. Have you figured out yet what your great attraction is for me? Could it be that you’re a stranger with a perfectly innocent reason for being in my house? The only man I could take into my bed without starting the tongues wagging, without bringing the constable and his notebook around? Three months is a long time to fast. A woman gets less choosy.”
Now we were both flushed. “And here I thought it was the mystical look in my eyes,” I said as I stood up.
From the parlor doorway, I added, “I was told something else at the pub. You don’t have an alibi for the night your husband died.”
“Oh, I have an alibi,” Breda replied. She was staring into the turf fire again. “You met him just now in the lane. Checkout is eleven sharp, Mr. Keane.”
4
I slept alone that second night at the Hill of Slane Bed and Breakfast, but I didn’t check out the next morning. I snuck out instead. While Breda was busy in the kitchen, I slipped into the lane and made my way up to the High Street.
It was going to be a beautiful June day in Ireland, which meant that a sweater would be optional. After noon, that is. Noon was hours away and I had no sweater, so I turned up my collar and tugged my lapels together, joining the priesthood again. The irregular priesthood.
My very vague plan was to chat up Mullin the pub owner, to get an unbiased version of Timothy McKinney’s death. But when I neared the crossroads where the pub sat, I smelled bacon frying and coffee and added them to my list of goals.