Chain of Evidence by Cora Harrison Page B

the one who was always first with the news.
    ‘Crushed to death by the stampeding cows,’ said Aidan.
    Mara looked severely at him. ‘A terrible death for a man, a man who was doing his duty and probably trying to save his cows from being stolen,’ she reminded him and then frowned. What was it that Maol, Garrett’s steward, had said to her two nights ago when she was up at Carron Castle attending the wake of the
tánaiste
? Something about Garrett having dismissed his cowman . . . Yes, the name had been Brennan. Surely, if he had already been dismissed, this man, Brennan, would not interpose his body between the raiders and the marauding cow thieves.
    ‘It’s impossible to recognise a face,’ said Ardal quietly. ‘Even the clothing is . . .’ He stopped with an eye on Fiona. Ardal was a very chivalrous man and he felt, thought Mara, that the small, sweet-looking Fiona with her primrose curls and large blue eyes looked too fragile to hear what he had been about to say.
    ‘Unrecognisable with blood and dust and cattle droppings, I suppose,’ finished Mara briskly. She had few worries about Fiona’s toughness; Hugh, perhaps, but then her scholars were training to be law enforcers and she could not shield them from the harsh realities of life.
    ‘That’s it,’ said Ardal, giving Fiona an uneasy glance. She stared back at him with her innocent blue eyes agog for more details.
    ‘So no one knows whose body it is,’ said Mara thoughtfully.
    ‘And I don’t suppose that we will know until all that
slógad
are back with the cattle,’ said Brigid briskly.
    ‘Is there anyone supposed to be missing from Carron Castle, my lord?’ Moylan asked the question respectfully. Horses were an obsession with him and he was a great admirer of Ardal who bred several very successful strains of horse and was a great buyer and seller of racehorses as well as of trotting horses.
    ‘Well, yes,’ said Ardal reluctantly. ‘There is, indeed, someone missing.’ He looked at Mara and she moved back inside to within the enclosure but did not offer to him the privacy of the schoolhouse. Whoever was killed, there was no doubt that the news would be all over the Burren soon and she did not want to deny Brigid the chance to be one of the first to have the story.
    ‘Who is missing, then?’ she asked and then, from his appalled expression, guessed the answer.
    ‘Garrett?’ she asked and he nodded.
    ‘It’s still very unsure,’ he said hastily. Ardal always liked to be certain of his facts. ‘No one seems to know whether he was in the castle when the cattle stampeded past, not even the
taoiseach
’s wife knows that.’
    ‘Which one of them?’ Mara heard Aidan’s mutter, but ignored him. Her mind was busy. Her eyes met Ardal’s and saw her puzzlement reflected in his. Garrett MacNamara, she would have thought, was the last man in the kingdom to rush out in front of a herd of stampeding cows. It was one of the complaints about him that he had no interest in cattle, no knowledge of them and seemed to be only concerned with how much money he could wring from the clan in the way of rent. He would never have hazarded his life like that. Not even Muiris O’Heynes, the greatest cattle expert on the Burren, would have tried to do something of that nature.
    ‘In God’s name, what was he doing out on the road in the first place?’ asked Brigid. ‘We heard them over here. We heard them coming from Noughaval, heard them galloping down the road. Cumhal says to me, didn’t you, Cumhal? – “that’s a cattle raid if I’m a Christian” and out he goes and calls the cows into the barn and keeps them shut in there until the noise was well past.’
    ‘I can always rely on Cumhal,’ said Mara to Ardal, noticing that Stephen had gone back into the schoolhouse. No doubt he was filling another page on cattle raids among the ‘wild Irish’.
    ‘I guessed they were on their way to the border point at Abbey Hill, and that they