Chapter 21
The next afternoon, Jeanie Brady was waiting for Siobhán outside Butler’s Undertaker, Lounge, and Pub. She was a short and round woman in her fifties, with layered brown hair, full cheeks, and alert hazel eyes. A down to earth woman, she was astute, meticulous, and cared deeply about her profession. “Do you mind if we do a walk-about?” Jeanie said when Siobhán approached. “Me legs are stiff from the car ride, then getting straight to work.”
“Not a bother,” Siobhán said.
“There’s a few heads in the lounge,” she said. “From the way they’re drinking I’m guessing it’s the scribblers.”
“I can’t blame them,” Siobhán said. “It’s been a stressful few days.” Although the weather had calmed down, there were remnants of the storm everywhere you looked. Branches that had fallen from trees, rubbish blown about, and puddles that had yet to evaporate. As they walked, Jeanie Brady wasted no time in filling Siobhán in on her findings thus far.
“There were no traces of nuts on the pages,” Jeanie Brady said. “And although official tests will take a while, in my professional opinion this death was not caused by a nut allergy.” Did that mean the intended victim could have been Nessa Lamb? “But I did find an injection mark on the back of her neck, and I believe the killer held a gloved hand over her mouth and nose while the poison did its job.”
“Poison? From the injection?”
“No.” Jeanie stopped for a moment in front of the Kilbane Museum, a tiny stone building filled with Irish history and artifacts, and had a look in the window briefly before they continued on. “Tests will have to confirm it, but I believe the injection was to sedate her.”
“That was Macdara’s theory as well.”
Jeanie nodded. “Although, once again, tests will have to confirm it, I believe the poison was on the back of a sample I found in her mouth.”
“Sample?” Siobhán stopped. “Do you mean the book pages?”
“There was no poison on the book pages.”
“Okay . . .” Jeanie Brady was working up to something and Siobhán had learned to give her room to do it.
“This was a cold and calculated murder.”
“I agree, but take me through it.” This time when they began walking again, Jeanie Brady picked up the pace. It gave Siobhán the urge to go running, but in the moment she’d settle for the brisk walk.
“The syringe with a sedative, the glove, the sample. It took a lot of planning, especially to strike that quickly once the power went out.”
“You said gloved hand. How did you determine it was a glove?”
“I found a tiny fiber around the victim’s mouth consistent with leather. Black gloves, it appears.”
They had arrived at the field in front of the abbey, and were approaching the small bridge across the river. In the distance the abbey was a comforting sight. Every time
Siobhán was near it, she couldn’t help but imagine the monks who used to live there, brewing beer at the river, cooking in the kitchen, praying in the chapel, and perhaps watching the light shine in through the abbey’s stunning five-light windows.
“Are any of your suspects interior decorators?” Jeanie Brady asked. There was a sparkle in her eye.
This had been the last thing Siobhán expected her to say. “Interior decorators?” She shook her head. “They’re all writer types.” She hesitated, remembering Padraig’s folder dedicated to the bookshop. “Wait. One of the bookshop owners designed and decorated the shop.”
“How do you know?”
“There’s an entire folder labeled Design in their back office.” The office they wanted to keep secret. As a lark? Or something more sinister?
“I need it. Immediately.”
“Of course.” Siobhán placed a call to Macdara and described the folder in the back office labeled DESIGN. She hung up, and turned to Jeanie. “They’re going to pick it up now and it will be logged into the evidence room at the garda station.”
“Let’s go.”
They turned and headed in the opposite direction. “Are you going to be examining Margaret O’Shea’s body next?”
“Yes. But if she too was murdered by arsenic we’ll be waiting on those test results.”
“Arsenic?”
Jeanie nodded. “That’s my best guess. It kills quickly and is readily available. And then there’s a matter of the sample.. . .” Jeanie Brady pulled out her mobile phone and brought up a photo. She handed it to Siobhán, who had to squint to make sense of what she was looking at, adjusting the distance of the phone to her eyes. “That’s right,” Jeanie said. “You’re getting older, I hear.” Jeanie reached into her pocket again and pulled out an enormous bar of chocolate. “Happy birthday, luv.”
Siobhán felt an unexpected thrill as she accepted the chocolate and tucked it into her own pocket for later. “Thanks a million. I can’t believe this is the last of my twenties.”
Jeanie Brady sighed. “Twenties,” she said. “I barely remember them. But your thirties? Now that’s living.”
Siobhán grinned, then turned back to the mobile phone. “What is this?” It was a small section of decorative paper. It looked old, or faded. Yellow edges with swirls of light blue in the middle.
“That,” Jeanie Brady said, “is what ultimately killed Deirdre Walsh.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Wallpaper,” Jeanie Brady said. “Deirdre Walsh was killed by poison—best guess arsenic—on the back of a sample of wallpaper.”
* * *
Jeanie Brady wanted to stop in front of Turn the Page. They stood in front of the bookshop as Jeanie cupped her hands and looked in the window.
“I can just imagine that new book smell,” she said, inhaling as she stood back up.
“I can take you inside,” Siobhán said. “We can pick up booties and gloves at the station.”
“Another day,” Jeanie said. “Your photos of the scene were very clear, and if we went in I would just want to poke my nose into books.”
“Are you a big reader?”
“I like nonfiction. True crime is my favorite.” She laughed. “I know, I know. You’d think I’d want a break from my work. But I eat it up. Especially when the rich and famous are up to no good. I’m a little addict.”
“I’m afraid you won’t find any true crime books in there yet,” Siobhán said. “They only sell literary fiction and history.”
Jeanie scrunched her nose. “What kind of nonsense is that?”
“Oran McCarthy is very particular about his literature.”
“That can’t be good for business,” Jeanie said, as they turned to head to the garda station. “Not that I don’t appreciate good literature.”
“Please,” Siobhán said, as they passed King John’s Castle. “I need to know more about this wallpaper.”
“You and me both,” Jeanie Brady said. “The book pages in her mouth hid it from view, but this little sample of wallpaper was found in her mouth underneath the tongue. If she was too groggy to respond, this was a very efficient place for the poison to quickly circulate through the bloodstream.”
“Arsenic,” Siobhán said. “In wallpaper.”
“Arsenic is quick,” Jeanie said. “Death within minutes. Sedating her first so she can’t scream while the poison is delivered through the mouth makes sense. The gloves, the injection mark, and the wallpaper, as well as reports that no one heard her scream, all paints a sinister picture.”
“Tells a story,” Siobhán said, mostly to herself.
“Indeed,” Jeanie said. “Indeed, it does.”
“That means our killer needed to get his hands on a hypodermic needle, wallpaper, and arsenic,” Siobhán said.
“I wish I could say that wasn’t easy to do. But one can get almost anything on the Internet these days and I’m not even talking about the Dark Web. The Guardian newspaper proved this once by purchasing antique flypaper infused with between two hundred and four hundred milligrams of arsenic from eBay.”
“My word,” Siobhán said as a shiver ran through her. Mankind was, and probably always would be, made up of light and dark. When they reached the front of the garda station they came to a stop. Jeanie’s gaze stayed on the bookshop across the way. The sun was peeking out from beneath dark clouds. A brief respite from the rain. If it stayed out long enough, there would be rainbows. It was a good metaphor to cling to in dark times. After the dark, the sun will shine, and in between there will be rainbows.
“Let’s talk about the items found near Deirdre’s body,” Jeanie said. “The umbrella, biro, and a red rose.”
“Yes,” Siobhán said. “We don’t know whether Deirdre dropped them, or the killer planted them.”
“I didn’t always read true crime,” Jeanie said. “I started with mysteries.”
Another big reader. Siobhán was feeling like the lone one out. She was really going to have to rectify that. “Okay.”
“Here’s what comes to mind with the items.” Jeanie counted off on her fingers. “First, the rose. Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.” She held up a second finger. “Poisoned pens are a popular trope in many murder mysteries, and of course, most intriguing of all is the umbrella.” She held up the third finger.
“The umbrella?” Siobhán said. “I would have thought it was the least intriguing. There was after all a big storm that day.”
When Jeanie Brady turned to her, her eyes conveyed her excitement. “Have you ever heard of the Bulgarian umbrella?”
“No,” Siobhán said. “Is it better in the wind?”
Jeanie laughed, then frowned, and wagged her finger. “Tis a good thing there’s a bookshop in town. You can brush up on your reading.”
Had Jeanie Brady not just given her a lovely bar of chocolate, she would have been tempted to knock her about with a brellie if she had one on her. “I can run home and Google it, which I’ve been doing way too much lately, or you could save me a bit of time and enlighten me.”
“Indeed, I will. Twas developed by the Bulgarian Secret Service and perhaps assisted by the KGB. During the time of the Cold War, mind ya. Was only used as an assassination tool twice, I believe.”
“Assassination tool? Did they knock someone over the head?”
Jeanie Brady sighed, her disapproval evident. “The pointy end had a hidden mechanism. Containing a tiny pellet of ricin.” Siobhán felt a shiver run through her. “All the killer had to do was walk by, poke the victim right quick, and rush away.” Jeanie acted it out for her, so immersed in her role as assassin that Siobhán was suddenly grateful the woman had been drawn to the good side of crime.
If the umbrella was the murder weapon, Deirdre could have been stabbed in the dark when no one was watching. “You’ll want to test the tip of the umbrella for poison then, as well.”
“I can have a look,” Jeanie said, waving it off. “However, my initial guess, given the sedative and poison wallpaper did the job, is that the objects are more of a message. A story the killer is painting. Showmanship.”
“I’ve thought that all along,” Siobhán said. “Our killer is very creative.” This murder had been meticulously crafted. Siobhán doubted very much that the killer had accidentally killed the wrong victim. No. Deirdre Walsh was the intended target. Was Nessa Lamb the mastermind? Trying to throw Siobhán off the trail by suggesting the killer was after her?
“Let’s go collect our evidence,” Jeanie said, nodding at Siobhán as she held the door to the garda station open. “And I hear you have a new garda. I’d very much like to meet her.”
* * *
Garda Dabiri and Jeanie Brady got on like a house on fire. They chattered away before the three of them sat in an interview room where they could spread out the contents of the interior-decorating folder organized by Padraig along with photos of the crime scene.
“They have good taste,” Jeanie said as they separated the samples and photos of the bookshop.
“Wait until you actually step inside the shop,” Siobhán said. “It’s gorgeous.”
Jeanie leaned closer to the photographs. “I don’t see any wallpaper.”
“No,” Siobhán said. “Just samples in the folder. The walls have all been painted.”
“Did the space have wallpaper previously?”
“That is a good question,” Siobhán said. “I don’t know.”
Jeanie Brady pulled out the photo she’d e-mailed to the garda station of the wallpaper found in Deirdre’s mouth. It was cream colored with blue swirls. It looked old and did not match any of Padraig’s wallpaper samples.
“That sample looks familiar,” Aretta said, tapping her forehead with her index finger. “But I can’t quite place where I’ve seen it.”
“Think about something else,” Jeanie said. “It’s the only way it will come to you.”
“We have an interview scheduled for later this afternoon with the bookshop’s landlord and the lads who built the secret door,” Aretta said. “I can make a note for the guards to ask the landlord if he knows if the walls were previously wallpapered.”
“Secret door?” Jeanie said.
Siobhán filled her in on the bookshelf that was actually a door to the back office. “Interesting,” Jeanie said. “And creative.”
Jeanie stretched. “I know there is more to go over, but I’m knackered and I need to go back to my room for a kip.”
“You should just make it a good night’s sleep,” Siobhán said. She was feeling tired herself. Jeanie would also be attending to Margaret O’Shea’s examination tomorrow. “Good work, everyone,” she said. “We’ll start fresh tomorrow.”
They began to clear the table. Jeanie stood, reached into her handbag, and pulled out a hardback book. “I’m only disappointed I won’t be able to get this signed.” Siobhán caught the name Michael O’Mara on the spine.
“It’s his very first,” Jeanie said.
“I thought you only read true crime,” Siobhán teased.
“I thought Michael O’Mara might be here,” Jeanie said with a sigh. “My nephew is a fan.” They left the interview room and headed for the exit.
“Are you staying at the Kilbane Inn?” Siobhán asked.
“No, I’ve taken a room above the comic book shop.” Chris Gordon had rooms above his shop and often rented them out. Siobhán still hadn’t had a good chat with him. His interview was scheduled for tomorrow.
“I’ll walk you,” she said.
“I’m heading that way too,” Aretta said. “May I join?”
“Of course,” Siobhán said. The rain was back, spitting on them as they made the short trek to the comic book shop.
“I’ve never seen that edition of a Michael O’Mara book,” Aretta said, pointing to the one Jeanie held under her umbrella, trying to keep it dry.
“It’s a first edition,” Jeanie said.
“May I see it?” Aretta asked. Jeanie nudged close and handed it over. Aretta waited until they reached the overhang of the comic book shop, backed up against the wall, then gently opened the book. Moments later she gasped. Jeanie Brady leaned in.
“What is it?” Siobhán asked.
“In his latest books, Michael O’Mara does not have an author photo. And I’ve been looking everywhere online. All I could find is a black and white photograph from when he was young. I was curious because someone mentioned he had a beard. And look.”
Aretta turned the book around. The author photo was in color. He stood in front of a farmer’s field, a big grin on his face. He was a burly man with a long red beard.