Page 26 of Death at Inishmore Castle

I nodded. “She’s learning how to make bread with the rest of the guests, except for the nun. You said she hadn’t come down yet, but it’s awful late.”

“And you didn’t want to participate in baking bread?” He ignored my comment about the nun, and laughed after asking the question because he knew my talents were non-existent in the kitchen.

“No. But I was talking to Fiona, who is a birder.”

“I spoke with her,” he said.

“Right. Well, she mentioned that when she went to the pond yesterday, she tried to speak with the priest, but he wasn’t in the mood to talk.”

“Right. She told me the same,” he said as he flipped through his notebook where he kept his notes on interviews.

“Right. But did she tell you she’d been taking pictures at the pond?”

“Yes. Of birds.”

I smiled. “There are a lot of them. But she also caught this.” I showed him the picture on her camera.

“That’s Sister Sarah and the priest,” he said. “We know they were arguing off and on throughout the day. More than one witness has given us that information.” Which proved the priest and nun hadn’t cared who saw them.

Would it be too obvious if the nun was the killer?

Whatever had been going on with them, they had to be in on it together. And it made sense that she might be the one who killed him. No one else had met him before this weekend, as far as we knew. I kept trying to believe because she was so petite it couldn’t be her, but maybe I was wrong. If she was a trained killer, there was no telling what she might have done.

“I saw them arguing, too. But what I’m curious about is who is the person watching them at the top of the hill?”

“It’s so blurry, I’m not sure we’ll be able to make it out. You’re right, though. Whoever it is seems to be facing them.”

“That means there may be a third party involved here on the estate.” One more potential killer to worry about. “But you can blow the photo up, right? And don’t the police have ways of enhancing pixels? You can clean all this up with one of your machines.”

He laughed. “This isn’t one of your mysteries, but, yes, we can blow it up. It might at least tell us if we’re looking for a man or a woman. As for the pixels, we can send it off to Dublin, but it doesn’t work the way you think. The person is little more than a shadow.”

“I’m having trouble seeing anyone, besides Sister Sarah, having a motive to kill him. She seems almost too obvious.”

“You may be right, which is why we don’t jump to conclusions. First, I need Fiona’s permission to take the photo from her camera. We have this thing called chain of evidence and I have to go by the book.”

I sighed. “Going by the book is boring, but I understand what you’re saying. At the very least, we also need to talk to the nun.”

He nodded. “If we can find her. I have one of my men looking for her now. He knocked on her door, but she was gone. And she wasn’t in the kitchen either, you said?”

“No. But I can help look.”

“I think it’s best if you don’t go out alone. Wait until I can go with you.”

I didn’t need a man to hold my hand. I was perfectly able to take care of myself.

“But first, I need to ask Fiona for that picture,” Kieran said.

“What about the accountant fellow, Maximillian? Have you spoken to him?” I kept meaning to talk to him but the chance hadn’t come up.

“Yes.”

“That’s all I get?”

“Yes.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”

He followed me back to the kitchen and spoke with the birder.

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