The Celtic Riddle by Lyn Hamilton

shop?"
    "Not at all," I replied. "Objects of destruction on red velvet are
not quite the look we strive for at Green-halgh & McClintoch."
Well, maybe one or two of those maps, I thought to myself.
    He looked suspiciously at me. "And you have not even once worried
just a little about the shop while we've been here? I did notice you
eyeing the pay phones in Shannon Airport the moment we got off the
plane, did I not?"
    "I'm not worried at all," I replied. That was patently untrue, and
both of us knew it. I had indeed been eyeing the telephones at the
airport. I did realize, however, that it was the middle of the night
back home, and had managed to restrain myself.
    Normally there are always two people in the shop, one to be at the
cash, one to help the customers. When I'm off on buying trips, Alex
stays in the shop with Sarah; when she's on holiday, it's Alex and I,
and so on. But with two of us away, that left Sarah on her own, and
Sarah, who's a whiz on the business and financial side of things, but
not comfortable on the sales side, was a bit nervous about it all. For
a while, I found myself with competing loyalties: looking after Alex or
minding the store.
    In the end I asked my ex-husband Clive Swain, who had the supremely
bad taste to open an antiques store right across the road from
Greenhalgh & McClintoch, to keep an eye on the place for me, and
give Sarah a hand if she needed it. This is much akin to Custer asking
Crazy Horse to hold the fort while he goes off for a little R&R, of
course, but Clive, the rotter, had also dumped his second wife and,
when I wasn't looking, taken up with my best friend, Moira, a very
successful businesswoman who, I reasoned, was not so far gone in her
affection for Clive that she would allow him to ruin my store. I just
tried not to think too much about it.
    Rob and I were quiet for a minute or two, sipping our beer. I sat
admiring our surroundings, the somewhat prosaically named Hunt Room,
with glowing fireplace, nicely worn green, gold and red-striped sofas
and chairs, the dark green walls lined with prints of English hunting
scenes, and a rather valuable, if not to my taste, oil painting of a
stag cornered by a pack of hounds, over the mantelpiece. I knew what
would happen next, and right on cue, Rob sighed theatrically. "Okay, so
after almost twenty-five years in law enforcement, I can't help myself.
What makes you so sure that fellow Herlihy just fell?"
    "Well it was slippery enough. I should know. I took this something
less than graceful tumble down the hill myself, did Alex tell you?"
    "He did. He was obviously being very tactful, though. He didn't
mention anything about lack of grace."
    "It was quite undignified, I assure you. I was lucky to fall on mud
and wet grass. It made a mess of my clothes, but I wasn't hurt. The
slope was not all that steep, and there were no rocks at the bottom. A
few yards either way, though, and I'd have ended up like Herlihy. On
top of that, I'd only sipped a small whiskey. And Herlihy, as I
mentioned, not only had a reputation for drinking regularly, if
Deirdre's comments are anything to go by, but I noticed he kept nipping
out of the room for a few seconds at a time. At the time it was quite
clear to me that he was sneaking out for a swig or two of something or
other."
    "Maybe he was going to check the door, or he had a bladder problem,
or didn't want the others to see he was overcome with grief or
something," Rob interjected.
    "I don't think so. His shoes squeaked, and he stopped after a few
steps, just about as far as a sideboard in the hall on which there were
several bottles of booze, I'd noticed. He had another drink, a rather
large one, when Tweedledum or Tweedledee, whichever it was, said how
much he'd get. It was about fifteen thousand Irish punt, by the way,
which these days is worth more than twenty-five thousand dollars. That
should rule out suicide. Why kill yourself the day you come into some
money? When Alex and I left to go to the car, he