Page 9

NINE

The glow from my flashlight fell onto a body not far from the door. It was a man. I raced in to see if he was alive. He was face down, but I could tell it was Gordon O’Sullivan. There was blood on the floor next to his head, but he had a pulse.

“Is he alive?” Lizzie asked nervously from the doorway.

“Yes. Do you have your cell? Can you call Kieran?”

She pulled it out of her pocket. “No bars.”

“Okay. I’m going to stay here to see if I can help Gordon. I need you to be brave and run back to the castle and get Kieran.”

“It isn’t about being brave. I don’t want to leave you alone,” she said. “What if the person who hurt him is still here?” She whispered the last bit as if she realized we might not be alone.

“Whoever did this is long gone. I promise you that.” I had no way of knowing for certain, but her voice trembled. I was worried about her. “Take Mr. Poe with you. I’ll be fine.” There was a broken whiskey bottle on the floor near his head. “I need you to hurry. He’s lost a lot of blood. I think someone hit him on the head with one of the whiskey bottles. Run, Lizzie.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. You know I can protect myself. Be careful. Run straight for the castle.”

“Okay.” She took off.

After taking Gordon’s pulse again, and checking for any broken bones, I rolled him over into the recovery position.

“Gordon? It’s Mercy. I’m one of the guests here. Can you hear me?”

His breathing seemed fine, but he wasn’t waking up.

I took my scarf from around my neck and put it under his head. There was a nasty gash on the side of his head. As if someone had hit him when he walked into the building. The blood had already started to coagulate.

At least, there is that . The blood stopping meant healing may have already begun.

I used my flashlight to see if I could find the lights in the distillery. It took a minute, but I found them. And even with them aglow, there were still a thousand places for someone to hide among the casks and the huge machines Gordon used to distill the whiskey.

I prayed whoever had done this to him was long gone.

I knelt beside him, and held his hand, checking for a pulse every few minutes while I waited.

“Gordon, I don’t know if you can hear me, but help is coming. Everything will be all right.”

His eyes blinked open and he winced.

“What happened?” His voice was hoarse.

“You have a bump on your head,” I said. “Do you remember anything?”

He reached up to touch his head, but I pulled his hand away.

“It’s a pretty serious injury, don’t touch. You need medical attention and possibly stitches.”

He tried to sit up, but I put a hand on his shoulder. “Help is coming. You need to stay still until they can take a look. It’s a big bump. And we need to make sure you’re not hurt anywhere else.”

“I’m fine,” he said. But he was extremely pale.

“Do you remember walking in here?”

“I was doing a last check of all the outhouses and the barn. I thought I saw a light in here. And the door was unlocked. I remembered locking it when I went up for tea earlier. I don’t remember anything after that.”

He tried to sit up again, but his face pulled tight. It was obvious he was in pain.

“Please, until Kieran’s men arrive, stay still. We don’t want to cause more damage.”

“Do you think someone did this to me? Or did I fall?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. “From the angle and the way that I found you, I don’t think you fell,” I said honestly.

“Someone did this to me? Do you think it’s the same person who killed the priest and the nun?”

“You heard about the nun?”

“Yes, several of our workers saw the police down at the pond. I understand the big boss wants to keep things quiet, but rumors are going to spread soon if we don’t tell everyone the truth.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “But since none of them can go home at the moment because of the river, I think Kieran is trying to keep things contained. It’s possible the killer is the one who hit you.”

It wasn’t until his eyes widened that I realized I had said that out loud. Oops. Kieran would be angry with me.

I shrugged. “Or, you know, a thief trying to steal some of your delicious whiskey.”

Why had they been out here? Had they been searching for something? I’d heard the word treasure earlier. Was that rumor true? I shook it off. It was as likely as the fairy stories we’d heard about Ireland.

“There are hundreds of years of history of the castle and the land around it,” I said. “But I’m curious if there is something here that people would be willing to kill for. Or if you keep any sort of records out here that they could have been searching for?”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe something related to the history of the place or even old bottles of whiskey that might be worth a lot?”

He glanced over at the bottle that was a few inches from his head. “That’s one of our newest batch,” he said as his eyes tried to focus on it.

“We’ve lots of old stories. Like most places in Ireland, we have a bloody past going back hundreds of years. But I don’t understand why someone is trying to sabotage us now. We live a peaceful life here. And have for as long as I can remember. We may not make much money, but we run a solid business. Someone is against us, though. I’d bet money on it.”

“Is that how you see the murders—as sabotage?” Everything I’d been thinking was conjecture. I had no more proof than Gordon did when it came to the why of the crimes.

“What else could it be? Someone wants to give us a bad name. They are killing off our guests. I mean, a priest and a nun. It doesn’t get much worse, does it?”

But who would want them to fail?

“I know you’ve been asked before, but did you know either of them before they came here?” I wasn’t willing to share that there was no way the man who was murdered had been a priest. His ID said otherwise. And I had a feeling when I could finally access the internet, I’d have more answers about Sister Sarah as well. Not many nuns had dyed blonde hair. Something that had just hit me while I sat here with Gordon.

And it followed that if the pretend priest knew the fake nun, that they’d both been here for nefarious purposes. Maybe they’d been working together or they were rivals. But it was the third party, the killer, who had me more confused than ever.

“No, we’d never met either of them before,” Gordon said, answering my question.

“Did they come together?”

“No. We had a van pick Sister Sarah up at the train station but the priest came in earlier. It’s odd, though.”

“What is?”

“They acted like they didn’t know one another. My wife had a small tea set up for when all the guests arrived. She says one never knows who might be hungry. At the tea, she had the guests introduce themselves to one another. You and your sister weren’t here yet.”

That had been my fault. I’d forgotten to set my alarm and overslept. Lizzie hadn’t been happy with me. She likes being punctual. But to me, time is usually relative since I spend a great deal of it writing stories in my head.

“And what happened?”

“Nothing. They seemed surprised that the other one was here. I can’t believe they are dead. Who would do such a thing?”

Someone truly awful. Even if they weren’t who they said they were, Gordon was right. No one deserved to die like they had.

Kieran rushed into the distillery with two of his men.

“He’s lost quite a bit of blood, but he’s conscious,” I said, as I moved away.

“I’m fine.” Gordon waved them away. “Just need some help up.”

“From the pool of blood on the floor, I doubt you’re fine,” Kieran said. “My men are trained for medical emergencies. Let them check you out.”

Gordon sighed but didn’t say anything else as the men looked him over.

“What happened?” Kieran asked me, as he helped me up off the floor.

“We were walking Mr. Poe and heard a strange sound coming from the distillery. Lizzie wanted to come get you, but I thought we should check it out first. You know, just to make certain we weren’t calling you out for nothing but the wind blowing a door open.”

He smirked. “Right.” That one word implied he didn’t believe I’d even considered asking him for help before I found out what was going on. He’d grown to know me quite well over the last few months.

“Anyway, when I opened the door, I found Gordon on the floor. I was just grateful he was still alive. And I sent Lizzie back to get you. That’s it.”

“Do you remember seeing anyone else while you were walking Mr. Poe?”

I shook my head. “No. From the way the blood had congealed on Gordon’s head, and on the floor, I’d say he’d been lying there for at least a half-hour or more. He said he’d come to check out the distillery because he’d seen a light. When he found the door was open, he went in, but that’s the last thing he remembers.”

“I see,” Kieran said. “Nice, that you’ve already begun the investigation.” His sarcasm screamed loudly.

I ignored him. “Are they back at the castle?” I was surprised Lizzie hadn’t followed them back out here.

“Who?”

“My sister and Mr. Poe,” I said as if he were daft.

“Sorry, I was thinking. You didn’t see anyone else on your walk, you’re sure?”

“No, we were quite alone. So, where is my sister?”

“I asked her to stay and keep Mrs. O’Sullivan calm. She was quite frantic and wanted to come with us, but I needed to assess the situation.”

“Well, the situation is someone conked Gordon hard on the head. He lost a lot of blood and is probably lucky to still be alive. My guess is he needs to go to a hospital and get some stitches at the very least.”

“I don’t need a blasted hospital,” Gordon said from the floor. “I’m fine.”

Kieran sighed and then looked at his men.

“He has a concussion, and the gash is deep,” one of them said. “He needs stitches, but we can do that up at the house.”

“Shouldn’t he go to the hospital?” I asked.

“Safer for him to stay on this side of the river,” Kieran said. “It’s rising again, and isn’t safe for the boats. And the winds are too strong to get a helo here from Dublin.”

“I’ll not be getting on one of those death traps. You can sew me up good as new here. My wife will tell you, I’ve a head as hard as stone.”

I stifled a smile behind my hand.

A thought hit me hard. “Gordon, is there anyone who is on your staff who maybe would do something like this? Anyone who might be upset with you and Nora for some reason.”

“No,” he said sharply. “Most of our staff have been with us for years. They are as loyal as they come. They stayed even when we had to cut back on wages a bit. We’ve given them stock options in the company and hope to make that up to them. They are all as good as they come.”

Well, there went that train of thought.

Even though he protested about it, Gordon was loaded on a gurney and wheeled toward the house. They put a plastic rain cover over him. It was coming down hard now. Any sort of footprints would be washed away soon.

More of Kieran’s team showed up, I assumed to work on the forensics. After explaining to the wider team what Gordon had said to me, I made my way back to the house. Well, I was escorted by Sheila, his second in command. His last words to me were to not go anywhere alone.

My hands were covered in blood, and I’d left behind the scarf I’d put under Gordon’s head. It too had been soaked in blood, and I had no need of it any longer. It would probably be bagged as evidence anyway.

Inside the kitchen, my sister and Mr. Poe waited for me.

“Is he going to be okay? Nora was worried sick about him. They’ve taken him up to their rooms.”

“I don’t blame her,” I said. “But he was talking and seemed okay when he left. They’ll probably need to observe him overnight to keep an eye on the concussion. But I think he’ll be all right. He wasn’t slurring his words or anything.”

“Well, at least there is that.” Lizzie wrung her hands nervously. It was one of the many signs she exhibited that the stress was getting to her. “I really want to go home to our little cottage and forget we ever came here. For such a pretty place, it feels so dangerous.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. But my mind was whirling with possibilities. And I only had one thing in mind. “Why don’t you go on to bed?”

I washed my bloodied hands in the sink until the water ran clear.

“Why aren’t you coming with me?”

“There’s something I want to do first.”

She sighed. “Is it something that could get you into trouble?”

“If I don’t tell you then you won’t be in trouble with me. Nor can you be blamed in any way for helping me do something I probably shouldn’t.”

“Mercy, leave the detecting to the professionals. Whoever is doing this is serious. That’s three people he or she has attacked.”

“I am going to be very careful. I’m not going after anyone. I just want to look at some things. You go on up to bed.”

“Remember when you said we wouldn’t be going anywhere alone? That goes for you as well. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

I suppressed a grin.

She might be the more sensible of the two of us, but she was clearly just as curious about what had been going on as I was. While she was usually reluctant when it came to investigating cases, she had my same sense of needing to know things. Maybe not quite to the extent I had, but it was in our DNA.

“Follow me, then,” I said.