‘I can and I will, but I’d like to know why. Okay, okay. I’m going.’ He left the office muttering to himself.
‘You were saying.’ Lottie pulled her chair over beside Lynch, conscious of McMahon sitting in what should be her office. He had a good view of them but hopefully he couldn’t hear them.
Lynch pointed to the printout. ‘It’s all to do with the course she was studying. I didn’t discover anything relating to drugs. Unless you count pages and pages about herbs and plants.’
‘I found a herbal book on her bedside cabinet. Wait a minute.’ Lottie rushed over to her desk and picked up the book. The outer jacket was torn and discoloured, the pages inside faded.
‘Awfully small print,’ Lynch said.
Lottie sat down again. ‘Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. She might have had an interest in this field. Any word on the haul from the coal bunker?’
‘Hypericum perforatum.’
‘What?
‘St John’s Wort. It’s a medicinal plant. Used to be sold for treating depression. Off the market now.’
Lottie ran her finger along the index and found St John’s Wort. Highlighted in pencil. Interesting.
‘By growing the plants in the bunker, Marian might’ve been trying to recreate its natural habitat – shady woods. Says here it is used for the treatment of melancholy and madness. I could do with some of that treatment.’ She closed the book. ‘What else on the transcript?’
‘It looks like she was attempting a family tree. We only have her Word documents. It’d be great if we could retrieve her internet history.’
‘Can we get access to her emails?’
‘I can check it out, if you think it’s of any use.’
‘Be good to know who, if anyone, she was in contact with. How far had she got with the family tree?’
‘Not far at all. She had Arthur’s family mapped out, linking into her marriage with him, and then down to Emma.’
‘And we still have no idea where he is,’ Lottie said. ‘On her own side, what did she have?’
‘Not a lot,’ Lynch said. ‘Parents – Tessa and Timothy Ball. But wait for this.’
Lottie glanced at the page Lynch was holding. ‘I haven’t got all day.’
‘She wrote a name, in brackets, beside Tessa’s. It is O’Dowd.’
‘What?’ Lottie took the page and read, scrunching her brow in a frown. Was it there because Marian had found out that Tessa had had an affair with Mick O’Dowd? Or were Tessa and Mick related somehow. Cousins? Brother and sister? Wouldn’t locals have known? Maybe it explained why Emma had fled to O’Dowd’s farmhouse. Or did it? ‘This is very confusing. Any other theories?’
‘Nope.’
‘You’re a font of information today, Lynch.’
‘That’s why I’ve been tearing my hair out.’
‘Keep going through it. Something might turn up.’
‘Right, but I don’t think it’s going to help us solve who killed Tessa and her family. If you ask me…’
‘Go on.’
‘I tend to agree with Inspector McMahon’s viewpoint: this is a drugs feud.’
Sure you do, Lottie thought. ‘We have to explore all avenues. Leave him and his cronies to follow up with his drug buddies, and we’ll do our side of things. Understood?’
Wheeling her chair back to her desk, Lottie realised she was beginning to sound a lot like Superintendent Corrigan.
* * *
The email icon flashed on her computer. She clicked open Emma Russell’s post-mortem preliminary report. Scanning through the document, her eyes zeroed in on the cause of death.
‘Boyd!’
‘You don’t have to shout, I’m just across from you.’
‘Cause of death… asphyxia due to aspiration of fluid in the lungs. Emma was drowned. And Jane found lacerations consistent with her spectacles being smashed into her face. Also a contusion on the back of her skull. Unable to determine if this was from a fall or from being hit with an as-yet-unknown implement.’
‘Poor girl. Someone beat her up and shoved her into a barrel of water while she was still alive.’
‘And there’s still no sight or sound of O’Dowd?’
‘Nope.’
Lottie told Boyd about the data from Marian’s laptop. ‘So were Tessa and O’Dowd related?’ she wondered.
‘I’ll check their birth certificates,’ he said.
‘We need to start looking at the why of all this, rather than the how. We know everything that has happened and most of how it happened. But we have no idea why.’
‘The drugs angle?’
‘McMahon can work on that. More than likely it has a role somewhere. I just don’t think it’s a major one.’
‘So where do we start?’
She wanted to tell Boyd about her conversation with Buzz Flynn, but she wasn’t sure how he would react.
‘Why was the gun in Tessa’s possession?’
‘What?’ Boyd said.
‘Nothing.’
‘You mentioned the gun.’
‘Thinking out loud again. Why did Tessa have it? The old woman Kirby interviewed seemed to know her. Kitty Belfield. Let’s see if she’s at home. She might have some answers.’ Picking up her jacket from the floor, Lottie headed for the door.
‘Kirby already spoke with her,’ Boyd countered.
She turned, one arm in the sleeve of her jacket.
‘Are you coming or what?’
‘I suppose I am.’
Seventy-One
The drive up to Farranstown House provided a view of the churning black waters of Lough Cullion in the distance.
When she stepped out of the car, Lottie held onto the roof to steady herself against the rising swirl of wind. With waterlogged pebbles crunching beneath her boots, she reached the door of the eighteenth-century country manor ahead of Boyd. She dragged down on the worn piece of twine, ringing the ancient brass bell.
‘This is how the other half lives,’ Boyd whispered as they stood on the cracked concrete step, shielding themselves from the tempest.
‘Looks a bit sad,’ Lottie said, and pulled the string again.
‘I’m coming! I’m coming.’ The door swung inwards and a woman, bent double, her head almost touching her knees, appeared. ‘You youngsters have no patience. None whatsoever.’
Restraining herself from stooping down to the woman’s level, Lottie introduced herself and Boyd.
‘Can we have a few words please, Mrs Belfield?’
‘The name is Kitty. And where is that lovely young man who was here the other day? Did you not bring him with you?’
‘He’s busy,’ Lottie said, realising that Kitty was talking about Kirby.
‘Come in so. He loved my bacon and cabbage. A great chat he was. Don’t get many round here to talk to nowadays. Sorry about the cold. I usually don’t put down a fire until seven.’ She led the way inside.
It was colder inside than out. The wide stone-floored hall, naked of any adornments, gave way to a large high-ceilinged living room. The walls were dressed in hanging tapestries depicting long-ago battles, and the ceiling, decorated with alabaster coving, seemed to creak with the weight of the upper level. Two couches that had once been upholstered in black leather, now stripped to their lining, were the only furniture in front of the vast cast-iron fireplace. A couple of logs sat in the grate with rolled-up sheets of newspaper protruding.
‘Sit down,’ Kitty said. ‘I can’t see you when you’re standing up. Scoliosis of the spine has me crippled. I won’t offer tea, because it isn’t teatime, so let’s be hearing what you have to say for yourselves.’
‘It’s about Tessa Ball,’ Lottie began.
‘Well, it’s hardly about the weather, young lady. What do you want to know about Tessa that you haven’t heard from your friend Larry?’
‘Larry?’ Boyd frowned.
‘Kirby,’ Lottie whispered.
‘Lovely young man – I’d say he’s a right hit with the ladies.’
‘You’d be correct there,’ Boyd said.
‘About Tessa,’ Lottie insisted. ‘We know she worked in partnership with your husband. Was there anything she might have been involved in that could have resulted in her murder?’