Page 67 of Death at Inishmore Castle

Motive slapped me across the head. Why? And was she strong enough to push that letter opener through some ribs and into the heart? I didn’t think so.

“You seem to be friendly with the police,” the accountant said to me. “What do you think is going on? My clients aren’t telling me anything. The household staff have said that the priest and the nun were murdered. Is that true?”

You should know since you killed them. I didn’t say that out loud, but I was thinking it. I’d warned Kieran he couldn’t keep things under wraps forever.

Maximillian sounded genuinely curious, but there was something shifty about him. “How long have you known the O’Sullivans?” I asked, changing the topic.

He blinked and then rubbed his chin. “My father was their advisor before me. So, I guess, most of my life. You’ve been hanging out with the detective inspector, what can you tell us?”

“She sometimes works as a consultant with the police,” my sister said proudly. “But she’s not allowed to talk about it.”

“I think whoever is doing this has ties to the estate in some way,” I said.

“You aren’t blaming my clients for anything untoward, are you?” He was abrupt and his tone was rude.

And who said untoward anymore?

“Of course she isn’t,” Lolly said in my defense. “My grandson is the detective inspector, and I can assure you he has everything in hand. There’s no need to worry.”

“But they should be telling us something,” Sally interjected. “I can’t believe someone has been murdered and they won’t tell us anything. They should have let us leave earlier. And now we’re stuck because of another storm.

“What if it’s like some Agatha Christie novel and we’re being knocked off one by one?”

Her husband patted her shoulder. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you.”

“Well, it’s not my imagination that something is wonky. And no disrespect to your grandson, Lolly, but people have died here, and I find the whole situation highly suspicious. I don’t feel like we’re safe. Maybe we should hire a helicopter since we can’t pass over the river.”

“They can’t fly in weather like this,” her husband said. “I told you that earlier. Do you see the trees bending outside?”

Oh.

The walls were so thick that they blocked most of the sound from outside. But the winds coming off the sea were blustery.

“You seem in a hurry to leave,” I said. “Are you sure it isn’t something else bothering you?”

Rob and Scott hid their chuckles behind their hands. My sister poked me in the side.

“What do you mean by that?” Sally asked.

I’d stepped into that. “Nothing,” I said. I don’t think anyone believed me. I stopped myself from putting my foot in mymouth, but I didn’t like the idea that she played the innocent when we knew she was stealing from the O’Sullivans. And, yes, I realized she had a psychological problem she couldn’t control, but it was her attitude that upset me.

“Maximillian, since you’ve known the family longer than any of us, do you think someone is trying to rip them off in some way?” I stared pointedly at Sally. I held her gaze for a bit, and then she stared down at the floor.

“I do not know why,” he said. “Most of the art and antiquities are fake. We’re in the middle of nowhere. It isn’t like someone can just walk out the door with a fake painting.”

The way he said it made me believe he’d thought about doing that more than once. There was something about the way he said “fake” that made me suspicious. This guy was up to something, but what? And would he have killed for it?

Then it was like a gong going off in my brain. What if the evidence was in someone’s car? The police had thoroughly searched the house and behind the walls. Except for some footprints, at least from what I read in the evidence room, they hadn’t found anything out of sorts. But I wasn’t sure they’d searched the cars yet.

“When did the family decide to make the estate a money-making enterprise?” I asked the accountant, turning attention away from my foot-in-mouth-disease and trying to cover my blunder with Sally.

“Oh, this is something they’ve been working on for more than a decade. The whiskey has never been out of production. As that business picked up under Gordon’s management, they started investing in the castle. If you’re wondering if they are wealthy, they are not. They put everything they have into preserving this place.

“I tried to tell them it was a bad investment. There is always something going wrong, from the plumbing to the electrics.Since they married decades ago, Nora had it in her mind to open the house to the public. It may be the only thing that saves them. Except now someone has died, which is a disaster for publicity. They’ll never make a go of it now.”

“Is that true?” Rob asked.

“What do you mean?” Maximillian asked.

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