Whispers of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

bewildered by her calmness.
    “How can you possibly know that? It must be guesswork. Finn could have just as easily killed her as Conri.”
    Fidelma shook her head.
    “Consider the death wound. A needle inserted at the base of the neck under her braid.”
    “So?”
    “Certainly, a long sharp needle, like a
biorracha,
could, and probably did, cause that wound. However, how could a perfect stranger, or even an acquaintance such as Finn, inflict such a wound? How could someone persuade the girl to relax unsuspecting while they lifted her braid and then, suddenly, insert that needle? Who but alover? Someone she trusted. Someone whose intimate touch would arouse no suspicion. We are left with Segnat’s lover—her husband.”
    Abbot Laisran heaved a sigh.
    Fidelma added, “She arrived at Ballyconra expecting to find a loving husband, but found her murderer who had already planned her death to claim her inheritance.”
    “After he killed her, Conri stripped her of her clothes and jewels, dressed her in peasants’ clothes and placed her in a cart that had been used by his workers to transport dyed clothing. Then he took her to the woods where he hoped the body would lie unseen until it rotted or, even if it was discovered, might never be identified.”
    “He forgot that the dead can still tell us many things,” Fidelma agreed sadly.
    “They whisper to us and we must listen.”

CORPSE ON A HOLY DAY

    T he day was hot in spite of the breeze blowing off the sea from the south. The procession of pilgrims had left the sandy beach and was beginning to climb the steep green hill toward the distant oratory. They had stood in reverent silence before the ancient granite stone of St. Declan, a stone that, it was said, had floated to the spot across the sea bearing on it vestments and a tiny silver bell. It had floated ashore on this isolated part of the Irish coast and was found by a warrior prince named Declan who knew it was God’s way of ordaining him to preach the New Faith. So he began his mission among his own people, the Déices of the kingdom of Muman.
    There the stone had stood since the moment it had landed bearing its miraculous gifts. The young brother who was conducting thepilgrims around the sites sacred to Declan had informed his charges that if they were able to crawl under the stone then they would be cured of rheumatism but only if they were already free from sin. None of the band of pilgrims had ventured to seek proof of the stone’s miraculous property.
    Now they followed him slowly up the steep hill above the beach, straggling in a long line, passing the gray abbey walls, and moving toward the small chapel perched on the hilltop. This was the final site of the pilgrimage. It was the chapel that St. Declan had built two centuries before and in which his relics now reposed.
    Sister Fidelma wondered, and not for the first time, why she had bothered to join this pilgrimage on this stifling summer’s day. Her thought was immediately followed by a twinge of guilt, as it had been before. She felt an inner voice reprimanding her and pointing out that it was her duty as a religieuse to revere the life and works of those great men and women who had brought the Faith to the shores of Ireland.
    Her peripatetic journey, fulfilling her main duty as a
dálaigh,
or advocate, of the law courts of the five kingdoms of Ireland, had brought her to the subkingdom of the Déices on the south coast of Muman. When she had realized that she was staying a few days at the great abbey of Ard Mór, which St. Declan had founded, coinciding with the Holy Day set aside for his veneration, she had attached herself to the band of pilgrims being conducted around the principal sites associated with his life and work. Fidelma was always keen to acquire knowledge. She pressed her lips in a cynical grimace as she realized that she had answered her own question as to why she was part of this pilgrim group.
    Brother Ross, the young man in charge,