The Celtic Riddle

"Wrestled Conail or somebody else," he replied. "Could be. Or maybe he just found it in the house somewhere. A lot of speculation isn't there? We'll keep seeing what we can get from Conail. Ban Garda Minogue is interrogating him now." I noticed he always referred to her as Minogue in my presence and never Maeve. "We haven't got enough evidence to hold him for the murder-at this point it's her word against his-but fortunately perhaps, he's given us another reason to keep him here. Garda Murphy might not agree it's fortuitous, of course. His nose is being looked at right now. Broken, most likely, and swelling up something fierce. By the way," he said, "can you decipher this?" He handed me a sheet of paper, one that I'd come to recognize, with Eamon Byrne's initials and Second Chance at the top.

"Conail's clue?"

"Yup. He gave it to us. Said it was a worthless piece of junk. Jennifer told me you'd all been able to decipher any that turned up, ogham or something I think she said."

"It is. Alex is really the expert. He broke the code, so to speak. I recognize some of the letters now, but I'd have to have my cheat sheet. It's in a safety-deposit box at the Inn. Make me a copy, and I'll go right back there, do it and call you back."

"Thanks," he smiled. "That will save us some time. I already have a copy, so here it is. I'd like the rest of the clues, too, if you don't mind, although I gather they don't say much. Don't say anything about Deirdre's accusations, will you? We don't want to reveal our source to the family, most especially to Conail himself. We've just told him that an unspecified someone passing by saw him hanging around there. How's Jennifer doing, by the way? She's all right, isn't she? I haven't seen her much lately, but she seems happy."

The question I'd been dreading. I looked about me. There was one garda, Rob's deskmate, working just a few feet away, two others well within earshot. Somehow, I didn't think this was the time to tell him his daughter thought she was in love with an Irish sailor twice her age. "She's okay," I said. "But I think she misses you and your fatherly guidance." There, that was a big hint. "You should try and spend some time with her, just the two of you, so you can talk."

"Yes," he replied. "I should, and I will. I'm sure she's getting plenty of guidance from you, though. Just like you're guiding me, right now." He smiled. "Thanks for the advice."

I got up to leave. If he thought I was giving his daughter guidance, he wasn't going to be too pleased with the result. "Since I'm dispensing advice right now, I have some more for you. Get some sleep," I said as I headed out the door. I heard him chuckle, but didn't look around.

Conail and Fionuala's clue, the ray of the sun, was Grianan Ailech to Granard down the line of the noonday sun. No more helpful than any of the rest. I wrote them all down on a piece of paper and dropped them off at the garda station for Rob on the way to my next buying expedition. I'd heard there was an auction at a town on the other side of the Dingle Peninsula called Ballyferriter. I stopped off for a bite of lunch at a little wine bar on the main street of town and found, to my surprise, Jennifer and Gilhooly, Malachy and Kevin. I smiled at her and the two brothers, and glared at Gilhooly.

"How'd you get all the way over here?" I asked them.

"Paddy borrowed a van," Jennifer said, gesturing toward the window. A dilapidated van sat outside.

"We've found another clue," Jennifer said. "I made a copy of Uncle Alex's ogham table and brought it along."

"It's a mystery," Malachy said. Jennifer handed me the paper.

"All seen and seeing ring of fire," I read. "Which line of the poem did this one come from?"

"A flame of valor," Malachy replied. "And we've found another one, the one that goes with he who clears the mountain paths. Kev here had the idea that would refer to Mt. Brandon, named after St. Brandon, so we hiked all the way up the path to a cairn, and found it there."

"That's great," I said.

"Not entirely," Malachy said. "Tere's a small problem with it, you see. 'Twas hidden the same way as the others, and it has Byrne's initials on it and everything."

"But?"

"But it's blank! Here, take a look."

I looked. The now familiar paper was there, but it was, as Malachy said, quite blank.

"What does this mean?" Jennifer asked no one in particular. "The paper doesn't look as if it's ever been wet, or anything. Like the ink might have washed away."

"How should I know?" I replied. "Unless…" They all looked at me.

"There have been more of the second set of clues than the first. I mean, we've found ogham clues for lines of the poem no one was given. Presumably, we were supposed, with the clues we got, to figure out it was from 'Song of Amairgen,' and go and find all the lines of the poem, not just the ones we had." I stopped there, and they all waited. "So," I hesitated. "So I don't know."