EXECUTION IN E Page 12

  “I received this message this morning, not long before Saoirse arrived. Someone slipped the envelope under the door.” He pulled a plain white envelope from his pocket and handed it to Gethsemane.

  She opened it and removed a slip of writing paper with a solitary black-and-white drawing in the center. “A Jerusalem cross surrounded by an arrow, seven circles, a heart, and some squiggles, in a ring labeled with letters. What is it, some kind of cipher?” What did it remind her of?

  “It’s a sigil, or seal. A sort of pictograph used in medieval ceremonial magic.”

  A pictograph, like Rosalie’s message. “From the expression on your face, I gather medieval ceremonial magic isn’t a good thing.”

  “It’s not inherently any better nor any worse than any other form of magic. But that,” he pointed at the drawing, “was never used for anything good.”

  “What are sigils used for?”

  “Summoning angels, demons, and spirits.”

  “Let me guess. This particular sigil was not used for summoning angels and spirits.” If Rosalie had received a similar message…

  Tim shook his head.

  …No wonder Rosalie was upset. Gethsemane pinched the paper between two fingers and dangled it by its corner. “This is for summoning demons?” Rosalie had described it as a calling card. Was she expecting a demon to drop in for a visit? Who described a demon as a business associate?

  “Not demons, plural.”

  The kettle whistled. Gethsemane started and dropped the paper.

  “Let’s have tea first.” Tim poured hot water into the pot.

  She retrieved the picture and laid it on the kitchen table. She studied it while the tea steeped. “I can’t make any sense of it.”

  “On its own, it doesn’t make much sense. It’s meant to be esoteric. Only someone in on the secrets would understand what it meant. An uninitiated person who found it would think it no more than a strange doodle. But combined with the proper incantations and rituals—”

  “And harmonic likeness. Each ghost resonates to a particular tone so you’d have to combine the right harmony with the sigil and the proper summoning spell in order to bring a spirit back from the other side.”

  “Not needed for demons, I’m afraid. Unfortunate, because requiring that extra step might discourage people from dabbling. During a ritual, that sigil would stand in for the name of whatever entity, angelic or demonic, the magician wanted to summon. Especially with demons, as the entity’s true name, the sigil would give the conjurer some control over the entity.” Tim filled their teacups and sat across from her.

  Gethsemane ignored the rich, brown, malty liquid and pointed at the drawing. “These squiggles and symbols translate to a name? Whose name? Can you translate it?”

  “No, I can’t translate it,” Tim said. “But I don’t have to. I recognize it. My brother showed it to me once, as a warning.”

  “A warning about what?” Gooseflesh peppered her arms. Did she want to know the answer?

  “The only spell that particular sigil is used with is a spell to conjure the devil. It’s a spell for revenge. A magician who wanted revenge on his or her enemies, but who didn’t expect to live long enough to wreak it, would summon the devil and make a deal. In exchange for their soul, the devil would keep them alive long enough to exact retribution.”

  Gethsemane shuddered. Be careful what you ask. “Someone delivered that to you? As a warning? Is someone out to get you?”

  “I can’t think of anyone angry enough with me to sell their soul to the devil for a chance to get at me. Can’t recall doing anything worse than putting people to sleep with my sermons.”

  “Tim, this is serious. A person willing to suffer eternal damnation just to get back at someone, must really, really, really want to get back at someone.”

  “I agree it’s serious, but I don’t think it’s meant as a warning for me. You wouldn’t put your target on notice. That would give them the chance to conduct some magic of their own to protect themselves. What’s the saying about revenge? That it’s a dish best served cold?”

  “I see your point.” She slid the drawing close to herself and traced the outline of the central cross. “Why send it to anyone at all? Selling your soul to the devil doesn’t seem like the type of thing you’d advertise.” She pushed the drawing away and said a silent prayer of protection.

  “Don’t know,” Tim said. “As a heads up? A professional courtesy? Or maybe to brag, to thumb your nose at the Church, announcing that there’s nothing the Church can do to stop you? Whatever the motivation for sending it, we need to find out who sent it and why. If the devil’s on the loose in Dunmullach, we need to do something about it. We have to stop him.”

  “I can see why you don’t want Saoirse involved in this.” She’d refused to let the girl become involved in violent death by human agency. Satan-powered vengeance was definitely not in the realm of appropriate concerns for pre-teens. It wasn’t in the realm of appropriate concerns for adult musicians and parish priests, for that matter. “Should we be involved in it? Maybe we should call one of your brother’s colleagues?”

  “An exorcist? It’s not that simple, I’m afraid. You need hard evidence of demonic activity for the Church to sanction an exorcist’s involvement. We have a piece of paper.”

  Gethsemane snapped her fingers. “We have Rosalie Baraquin.”

  “Miss Baraquin? How can she help?”

  “She’s a conjure woman.” She described her chat with the other maid of honor. “According to Agnes, Rosalie’s experience with folk magic dates back generations. And that note she wouldn’t discuss with me? The drawing on it looked a lot like this sigil. Not exactly like it,” she reassured Tim as he paled, “but close enough to remind me of it. Maybe she knows something about this one.”

  “Knows something about it as in, knows who sent it? Or are you thinking maybe she sent it herself?”

  “I’m not sure what to think about Rosalie. One minute she seems like an average bridesmaid, the next I feel like I should check over my shoulder to make sure she’s not following me.” She pulled the sketch back around and scrutinized it. What else, besides Rosalie’s note, did it remind her of? Something…Her tattoo. It resembled one of Rosalie’s tattoos even more than it did her note. Gethsemane snapped a picture with her phone. “It’ll be interesting to see how she reacts to this.”

  A loud commotion outside carried into the kitchen. Gethsemane, Father Tim, and Saoirse rushed into the church yard to find Sunny and her wedding party gathered in the cloister.

  “You stupid, stupid, stupid cow!” Sunny, her complexion as scarlet as her hair, stood inches from Agnes and yelled in her face. “How dare you?”

  Agnes, eyes narrowed and fists clenched, yelled back. “Shut up! You inbred, histrionic, malicious brat! The EPA’s cleaned up chemical spills less toxic than you!”

  “You shut up, you insignificant wanna be. You should be on your knees thanking me for the chance to be in my wedding.”

  “You should be on your knees thanking me for not punching you in your head.”

  Rosalie, Theophilus, Brian, and Malcolm stared, open-mouthed, at the screaming women.

  Father Tim hurried over and stood between Agnes and Sunny. “May I be of assistance?”

  “Yeah,” Agnes said, “You can pray I don’t knock her pearly white implants right down her throat.”

  Tim held up his hands. “There’s no need for violence.”

  “What happened?” Saoirse asked.

  “What happened,” Sunny said, “is this middle-class nobody dared to call me, me, common. The Markhams are not common. We trace our lineage back to—”

  Agnes broke in. “The Mayflower and Columbus and the Emperor Charlemagne. Yadda, yadda, yadda, all the way back to Cain and Abel and nobody cares. And I didn’t say you were common, I said you were trash. I’ve met cl
eaning women and hot dog peddlers with more class than you.”

  Saoirse asked Gethsemane, “Aren’t they friends?”

  Rosalie snorted and covered a laugh with her hand.

  “Sunny doesn’t have friends, kid,” Agnes said. “You have to be human to have friends. This sociopathic, narcissistic, borderline snake has victims, people she manipulates and abuses.”

  “You’re jealous,” Sunny said, “because Ty chose me over you. He was going to marry me. You wanted him but I got him.”

  “I had no interest in marrying Ty, you self-absorbed twit. I didn’t need to because I ‘got’ him every other week and twice on holiday weekends. You might want to check your credit card statements a little closer, sweetie. Those restaurant and hotel charges were for two.”

  “Why you—” Sunny flew at Agnes.

  Agnes stepped back while Father Tim stepped forward. Malcolm jumped in front of the priest and intercepted Sunny. He wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms at her side, as she struggled to reach her bridesmaid. “Sunny, please,” he said. “This is a house of God. Well, His front yard, anyway.”

  She kicked at him. “Let go of me.”

  Malcolm’s grip tightened. “Not until you calm down. What good will attacking Agnes do?”

  “Snatching those braids out of her hair will make me feel good.”

  “You try it.” Agnes raised a fist. “There aren’t enough Instagram filters in the world to disguise what I’d do to you.”

  “Miss Haywood,” Father Tim slipped an arm around Agnes’s shoulder. “Perhaps you’d like to come into the rectory for a cup of tea.”

  Agnes shook him off. “What is it with the Irish and tea? Any trouble that happens, you make tea. Shouting match—tea. Fistfight—tea. Natural disaster—tea. Second coming—tea.”

  “Nothing a hot cup of Bewley’s Irish Breakfast can’t solve,” Brian said.

  Theophilus put his arm around Agnes. “Come on, Aggie, let’s you, Brian, and me head back to the inn. We can swing by the off license on the way, pick up a bottle of something stronger than tea, and get drunk in my room. Like we did with Ty and Verna in New Orleans. Remember?”

  Sunny sneered. “I’d think you’d all want to forget New Orleans.”

  Brian’s eyes narrowed. “I’d think you’d want to shut your gob, Sunny.”

  Malcolm shifted, blocking Sunny’s view of anyone but him. He smiled down at her. “C’mon, they’re not worth it. Let’s go for a walk around the village square, calm down. Or maybe a walk around the church gardens. See how beautiful they are.” He kept his eyes on Sunny as he spoke to Tim. “That would be all right, wouldn’t it, Father? A stroll through the grounds?”

  “Certainly,” Tim said. “Our Lady’s gardens are open to all. I find a walk ’round the church yard to be quite therapeutic.”

  “That’s a lovely poison garden you have, Father.” Agnes nodded at a small garden several yards away, isolated from the main garden by a high wrought iron fence and gate. “That’s where Mal and Sunny should stroll. And he should feed her a few samples.” Agnes’s baleful expression made the hair on Gethsemane’s neck stand up. She’d gotten a taste of the poison garden’s bounty, not so long ago, not an experience she’d wish on anyone.

  Sunny went for Agnes again and, again, Malcolm stopped her.

  “Let’s go, Aggie,” Theophilus said. “This isn’t how we want to remember Ty.”

  Theophilus and Brian steered Agnes toward the exit gate while Malcolm led Sunny in the opposite direction. Gethsemane, Rosalie, Tim, and Saoirse stared after them.

  “Wow,” Gethsemane said. “What was that?”

  “Sunny being Sunny,” Rosalie said, “and Agnes’s last nerve snapping. Sunny started in about how Agnes and the guys meant nothing to Ty. Agnes lost it.”

  “Nice job Mal running interference.”

  “The Lord of Chaos.”

  The four fell silent as they watched Malcolm escort Sunny past the poison garden to the church cemetery.

  “Strange place to walk, isn’t it, Miss?” Saoirse said.

  “You walk through the cemetery, Saoirse,” Gethsemane replied. “You like to read the old tombstones.”

  “That lady doesn’t look like she’s fond of tombstones, Miss. Far too posh.”

  “Don’t believe everything you see, kid,” Rosalie said.

  Speaking of things seen…Gethsemane pulled out her phone and showed Rosalie the photo of the sigil. “Do you have any idea what this is?”

  Rosalie paled and recoiled. “No. Why would I?”

  Gethsemane’s gaze drifted to Rosalie’s arms, covered by long, gauzy sleeves. “It reminds me of your tattoo. The one with the twenty-seven and the heart.”

  Rosalie crossed her arms. “I’m sure it doesn’t. It’s nothing like any of my tattoos.”

  “Okay, your note, then. The one from the business associate announcing a visit. It resembles the pictograph.”

  “No.” Rosalie looked ill. “It’s nothing like that note. You barely even got a look at it; how would you know what it resembles? The design in that photo is nothing like the note, it’s nothing like my tattoos. It’s nothing to do with me.”

  “You’re an occult expert. Agnes said—” Something stopped her from telling Rosalie what Agnes said about Rosalie’s hoodoo background.

  “Agnes said what?”

  “Just that you read tarot. You offered to do a reading for me.”

  “Which hardly makes me an occult expert. And, even if I was, I wouldn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “How do you know you wouldn’t have anything to do with it,” Saoirse asked, “if you don’t know what it is?”

  Rosalie scowled. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you children should be seen and not heard?” She hurried across the yard, toward the exit gate, without waiting for a reply.

  “Saoirse’s right,” Father Tim said. “If Miss Baraquin didn’t know what that thing was, she wouldn’t have been afraid of it. And it terrified her. She recognized the sigil. Could she have slipped it under my door?”

  “I don’t think so,” Gethsemane said. “You saw the way she reacted. If a photo of the sigil has that effect on her, I doubt she’d touch the actual drawing, let alone seal it in an envelope and hand deliver it.”

  “Which brings us back to, who did?” Father Tim said. “And why? Is it a boast, a warning, or a threat?”

  “I vote for a warning about Rosalie. I don’t care what she says, the sigil does resemble her tattoo with the twenty-seven and it resembles the pictograph in the note she received. Maybe someone’s warning us to watch out for her.”

  Tim frowned. “Or maybe they’re directing a threat toward her. Maybe she recognized the threat or who it came from and that’s why she’s so jumpy. Maybe we should watch over her instead of out for her.”

  “If it was meant as a threat toward Rosalie, why send it to you?”

  “The sender might have been afraid to leave it at the inn. Too many potential witnesses, a chance the maid might sweep it up. Maybe whoever sent it believed a priest would recognize its significance and connect it to Rosalie.”

  Gethsemane shook her head. “I don’t know, Tim. I’m still inclined toward warning about her. Rosalie Baraquin may not be physically large enough to have tossed Ty over a railing, but she knows more than she’s—” Beethoven’s “Fifth” sounded from her phone. A text from Niall filled the screen:

  You were right.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “Something serious?” Father Tim asked.

  “As serious as murder,” she said.

  Sixteen

  Niall met her in the Garda station’s parking lot. “Let’s go up to my office.”

  “Your office? No.” She responded to Niall’s puzzled look. “Every time I step into that building, I end up in an interroga
tion room. Sutton’s gone weeks without hauling me in, I don’t want to run into him.”

  “My office isn’t on the same floor as homicide.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m not chancing him finding me.”

  “You know he likes you.”

  Gethsemane laughed. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Yeah, he does. He admires intelligent women. His wife’s a nuclear chemist.”

  “He’s got a funny way of showing his admiration. How’d he act if he hated me?”

  “Don’t ask. Can we at least find a bench to sit on? Don’t make me eat my hat standing in a car park.”

  Gethsemane led the way across the parking lot to a small park opposite the station. Niall unfolded a piece of paper as they sat on a bench near the park’s entrance.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  Niall handed it to her. “Read it.”

  Niall’s full name and title, “Iollan Niall O’Reilly, Inspector,” marched across the To: line of an official-looking email. The CC: line included Sutton’s name. The sender’s title read “Coroner.” Gethsemane jumped to the end of the message. “Homicide,” she read aloud.

  “I bet you skip to the end of novels, too.”

  She rolled her eyes then went back to the top of the page. “Amphetamines and phencyclidine found on preliminary tox screen.” She stopped reading. “Phencyclidine, that’s PCP.”

  Niall nodded. “A hallucinogen.”

  “Ty was doing drugs?” She resumed reading. “Given the hallucinogenic properties of both amphetamines and phencyclidine, it’s possible the deceased may have been hallucinating when he jumped or fell from the catwalk of Carrick Point lighthouse. Further investigation is needed to determine whether he ingested the substances on his own or if they were administered to him. Although suicide remains a possibility, I am inclined to officially classify the death as either ‘death by misadventure’ or ‘homicide.’” She handed the email back to Niall. “Does Sutton know?”

  “Not yet. Figured I’d let him enjoy a cuppa before I ruin his day.”

  “I find it hard to believe Ty was on drugs. Granted, I only saw him a few times, but he always appeared sober. A gobshite, but never high, never even drunk, despite carrying a flask in his pocket. Chain smoking seemed to be his main vice, aside from ruining people’s lives.”