Page 35 of Death at Inishmore Castle

“That’s awful. I can’t believe you and Mr. Poe found her. Were you scared?”

I sighed. “Yes. But Kieran will kill me if he finds out I said anything to you.”

“Well, you didn’t say much. I asked you questions, and you answered truthfully. Why would someone want to kill a priest and a nun?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “Mr. Poe has become quite adept at finding dead bodies. It’s a bit scary if you ask me.”

As if he agreed, he yapped and then ran toward some conifers by the distillery.

Lizzie shivered. “I’m regretting persuading you to come here,” she said. “I thought this would be a good getaway for the both of us. We’ve been working so hard lately. Now two people are dead, and you’ve had to deal with dead bodies again. It’s awful, for you and them.”

I crooked my arm in hers. “Mostly for them. It is not your fault,” I said. “I’m glad we are here. Think about it. There are so many rooms in this castle. Who knows how long it would have taken for them to find the priest if it hadn’t been for Mr. Poe?”

“Still. You know how nervous I get when there are deaths. What if the murderer is still here?”

“They probably are,” I said. “Not to scare you. But the nun had to have been killed in the last twenty-four hours and since then, the road out of here has been blocked by water and then the police.”

“You’re not making me feel any better.”

“Sorry. But it’s true. That’s why I don’t want you going anywhere alone while we’re here.”

“I’m worried about you being in danger again. Kieran likes you. He would let us go home if you asked him.”

“Not without alerting the others staying here. Think about it. His grandmother is here. If he was truly worried about our safety, he would have evacuated her first.

“He thinks as long as we don’t ask the wrong person questions, then we should be perfectly safe. And Kieran likes the idea of keeping everyone together for as long as possible. As of right now, no one but us, and our friends, know a murder has been committed. Well, us, and the killer.”

“Do you have any suspects?”

“Everyone here who isn’t a friend of ours,” I said.

“Really?” She gasped.

“My prime suspect in the priest’s murder was the nun. He wasn’t who he said he was, and now I’m wondering about her. I feel like we may be back to square one.”

“Like, maybe they were both here under false pretenses.”

“Yes. And he was carrying ID with a different name. I pulled her out of the pond, but she didn’t have anything in the pockets of her habit. I wanted to search her room, but Kieran had Sheila box everything up and put it in the incident room here at the castle.”

“Let me guess. You want to sneak into the incident room and take a look?”

“Well, yes. You know how my brain works. I can’t just let it go. And maybe I’ll see something that will help.”

“No ego there.” She laughed. “I know you sometimes forget but you write fiction. You aren’t the detective in your novels.”

“As you and Kieran keep reminding me, how can I forget? You know what I mean. A fresh pair of eyes and all of that. It isn’t like we haven’t been useful in the past.”

“Just because you’ve helped solve a couple of crimes doesn’t mean you should do this every time. We don’t want to alert the killer we are on to them.”

It was difficult for me to explain. Even though I didn’t know those who had died, I felt a sort of responsibility because we’d found them. That and the fact that my writer’s brain would not let things go. It was the way I was made. I could be a bit obsessive-compulsive in that regard.

“You’ve grown closer to Kieran, why don’t you just ask him if you can look through things?” Lizzie asked.

I sighed. “I did. And I even gave him a picture of someone watching the priest and nun argue. But it was blurry, and there was no way to see who it was.”

She shivered again. “You think it was the killer?”

“Possibly. With the nun out of the picture, the murderer has to be either a guest, one of the O’Sullivans, or someone who works at the castle. I can’t imagine the O’Sullivans causing themselves this much trouble on opening weekend. But it might be one of the other guests, or someone else who works here. Since the trouble just started this weekend, I’m thinking it might be one of the guests.”

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