She smiled suddenly at Clídna. ‘And if any single haven of morality exists in this place, it is to be found here within this woman.’
Clídna blushed and hung her head.
Agdae rose slowly to his feet.
‘Your judgment on Araglin is harsh, sister,’ he said quietly. Then, with an awkward glance to the silent Cranat and her daughter, he added: ‘But it is not unjustly spoken. However, tell us how you came to identify Father Gormán? You also built up a good argument against Cranat.’
‘I knew it was unlikely that Cranat had killed them for a simple reason: if she had been the murderess then she would not have sent to my brother at Cashel to send a Brehon to make a formal investigation.’
‘Why did she do that?’ asked Eadulf.
‘Above all things, as we have learnt, Cranat is a princess of the Déisi. She did not want any finger of suspicion to be pointed at her house. She thought that the presence of a Brehon would lend moral weight to the matter. I believe that she really thought that Móen was guilty having discovered the truth of his birth.’
She gazed sorrowfully at Eadulf. ‘There was one point which destroyed the case against Cranat, which I presented purposefully to allay Gormán’s suspicion about where I was leading. Everyone failed to question it. That was good, otherwise Gormán might have been put on his guard but I am surprised some of you did not spot it.’
‘What was that?’ demanded Agdae gloomily.
‘You forgot the maxim —
‘Then what made you suspect Gormán?’ asked Gadra.
‘Easy to say,’ acknowledged Fidelma. ‘At Lios Mhór I first heard that Gormán was a fanatical advocate for Rome. As it turned out, he was simply a fanatic, an intolerant zealot, whatever he believed in. I learnt that he had built a chapel at Ard Mór and, I was informed, attracted much wealth to furnish it. His chapel here, Cill Uird, was equally opulent. Unlike most priests, he had money to equip and ride a horse.’
‘Wealth is not a sign of guilt,’ muttered Cranat.
‘It depends on where that wealth came from. Gormán had become the partner in a secret gold mine with Muadnat. How or why the partnership developed, perhaps we shall never know. My guess is that Muadnat, to exploit his mine and escape paying tribute to Eber, decided Gormán was a means of disguising where the gold came from. Gormán could pretend that it came as gifts from those who supported his beliefs. The gold was converted into riches stored in the chapels at Ard Mór and Cill Uird. What Muadnat overlooked was man’s inherent greed. Just because Gormán was a priest it did not mean that he was not a man.’
‘But why did he kill Eber and Teafa?’ demanded Crón, overcoming her resentment at what Fidelma had revealed about her relationship with her father.
‘I have said — he was an intolerant fanatic. Once he learnt that Eber was the father of Móen he was incensed against the immorality of it. Eber must be despatched to Gormán’s concept of hell and Móen, as a child of Eber’s incest, was to be punished by being accused of the murder. I have already explained that Teafa was killed to keep her silent about the evidence of the Ogam stick. The motive with Eber was no more complicated than Gormán’s zealous morality.’
‘But how did he learn that Móen was Eber’s son?’ asked Crón. ‘Even I did not know of it before you told us.’
Fidelma looked hard at Cranat.
‘I think that you can answer this question. Two weeks ago Dubán saw you and Teafa arguing. You left that argument and went directlyto see Gormán. When Teafa found out that Crón had used her relationship with her father to become tanist, she went to you to argue further why this thing must not be so. She told you that Móen was the child of Eber’s incest?’
‘As priest here, Father Gormán had a right to know,’ replied Cranat.
‘But Gormán was a fanatic and that knowledge led directly to their deaths. After Cranat had told him, Gormán went in fury to accuse Eber and Teafa. Crítán witnessed the confrontation and saw Eber strike the priest. That was when Gormán decided to kill him.’
‘But what if Móen had not picked out the perfume of the church incense?’ Eadulf reflected. ‘I would have thought that such incense would have been a common enough odour to Móen to have recognised and identified it with the chapel before this?’
Fidelma shook her head sadly at Eadulf.
‘Don’t you remember that Gormán told us that he refused to allow Móen into the chapel? That he avoided him? Móen was, therefore, not able to identify the perfume before today.’
‘But why did Father Gormán kill my uncle, Muadnat?’ asked Agdae. ‘He was his partner in the illegal mine.’
‘I mentioned the reason briefly before. As Muadnat began to draw more and more attention to himself, trying to legally wrest the land back from Archú, Gormán became fearful. This behaviour could lead to the discovery of the mine because people’s attention was being focussed on the area. Menma was Gormán’s man, not Muadnat’s. He had Menma kill Muadnat to preserve the secret. For the same reason, he had Menma kill Morna and Dignait. And Gorman’s simple greed played the prime part.’
‘What made you realise that Menma served Gormán?’
‘That there was some collaboration between Gormán and Menma became obvious to me. I saw them arguing together once. When Archú told Gormán he wanted to bring Muadnat to court over his land dispute, Gormán told Archú to take his case to LiosMhór. I found this curious until I realised that this would prevent Eber being involved in the case. Eber might have questioned Muadnat too closely. Gormán instructed Archú to go by a longer route to Lios Mhór. Perhaps the reason for this was so that Archú would not encounter the gold being transported to Ard Mór along the quicker route.
‘Gormán then found that one of the miners he was employing, Morna, had taken a piece of rock from the mine to his brother Bressal. Menma was told to kill Morna and also destroy the hostel. The excuse of outlaws in the district would serve as a covering for these acts.
‘There were several things that now drew my attention to Gormán. Eadulf had seen a slight figure wearing a parti-coloured cloak at Muadnat’s farmhouse. The figure vanished. Moments later, Gormán appeared but without a riding cloak. I knew Gormán had possessed such a cloak for I had seen the parti- coloured cloak in Gormán’s sacristy. Gormán’s clothes were also impregnated with a heavy scent from the incense he used in his church. Gormán wore gloves. The implication of these facts, I have already explained.
‘On the night before poor Brother Eadulf took the poisonous mushrooms, Gormán had overheard me expressing confidence to Crón that I could name the murderer by the next day. He slipped into the kitchen early the next morning and placed some false morel on the plates. Dignait had seen him in the kitchen and he realised that when word of the poison became known, she would not hesitate to point the finger at him to absolve herself. Or perhaps he had always meant to lay the blame on her. Menma was sent to silence her and told what to do with her body. Gormán was one of the few people who knew about the underground storage chamber on Archú’s farm for he had, as Archú told me, been there when someone died by accident and it was Gormán who suggested, at that time, the chamber be sealed. Gormán also wrote good Latin and Ogam. The parts of the puzzle were joining together.’
Fidelma paused and spread her hands expressively.
‘But, when all these facts were placed together, one main factor fitted the pieces of the puzzle into a frame. Gormán had been told that Móen was born of Eber’s incestuous relationship with his sister. He let the fact slip out when he was talking to me. His creed of intolerance could not accept it and for that he killed Eber and Teafa in an act whose motives were unrelated to the illegal gold mine.’
Three days later Fidelma and Eadulf stopped at Bressal’s ‘Hostel of the Stars’ to break the news of his brother’s death. The plump keeper of the hostel was shocked but resigned.
‘I suspected that death had overtaken him when he did not return. My brother spent his life searching for
