The Death of an Irish Lover by Bartholomew Gill

relationship?” McGarr asked.
    Gannon had to put a hand out to steady himself before sitting in a nearby chair. And it took a while before he could speak.
    McGarr pulled up another chair and listened to the contrapuntal ticking of two competing grandfather clocks in the overfurnished room.
    Finally, Gannon glanced up at McGarr. “I feel rather nauseous. It’s almost worse than their having been…murdered. I don’t mean that, but…”
    McGarr considered easing the man’s pain by telling him about the three-hour interval between their deaths and the supposition that the tryst had been staged. But what he was seeking was a confirmation of that theory. “Burke was a Lothario, I take it.”
    “Oh, aye—desperate. But I would never think, I could never think that Ellen and he were…”
    “Did you ever see her with Burke after working hours?”
    Gannon hunched burly shoulders that were wrapped in a waxed-cotton waterproof jacket of the sort that had been in the boot of his Cooper—McGarr only now realized—and would now have to be replaced. “Our ‘working’ hours are mainly at night at this time of year. It can be dangerous, so I often pair the staff. But not with Burke. I didn’t pair her with him. Ever.”
    “Why not?”
    Gannon’s eyes met McGarr’s for a moment before shying toward the door. “I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, but Pascal Burke was an unsavory character altogether and possibly a bad man.”
    McGarr nearly smiled at the innocence of the assessment. “Forever on the make, if you know what I mean.
    “At first I dismissed it as a midlife crisis, but it went on for”—Gannon opened his palms—“years. Also, there was the suspicion—which I was never able to prove—that he was taking backhanders.”
    “From poachers?”
    Gannon nodded.
    “What about this? It appears that Ellen’s husbandthinks her affair with Gannon had been going on before and during their marriage.”
    Gannon shook his head. “I can only say that, of all the women I know, including my own loyal wife, I would have expected that of Ellen Gilday Finn least.”
    Asking for Gannon’s confidence, McGarr then told him about the time lapse and the fact that Burke had been shot twice—once through the heart three hours earlier than the young woman, who had obviously been arranged on top of Burke before being shot herself. “That bullet entered Burke, too, but not as perfectly as the murderer or murderers planned. Was Ellen working Friday night?”
    Gannon nodded. “I had her paired with another officer patrolling the riverbanks about ten miles south of here.”
    “Can I speak to the…man, woman?”
    “Man. I’ll take you to him.”
    Outside, McGarr had to dodge a clutch of reporters, photographers, and cameramen who had gathered in front of the hotel.
    “You know as much as I know,” he told them. “The investigation has only just begun. When I know more and can tell you, I’ll call you together.”
    Which was greeted by a chorus of, “Yeah, right! ”
     
    Cold air from the fallen snow—meeting warm vapors off the water of the river—had created a funnel of cottony fog over the Shannon, and the ruts of an informal road along its eastern bank were brimming with meltwater, slush, and a thick slippery mud.
    Through it Gannon drove his battered Land Rover at a snail’s pace, the four-wheel-drive gear clattering in its box.
    McGarr sat beside Gannon, and Maddie had hopped in back with Gannon’s dog, a friendly black Lab that reeked of river muck and reeds.
    As though sensing that Maddie was a dog lover, O’Leary—as he was called—immediately moved toward her and leaned his considerable weight into her shoulder.
    Like her parents, Maddie would not grow tall, but she was a pretty girl with regular features and hair such a deep shade of red it was nearly brown. And where her dark brown eyes came from, nobody knew, since the only dark-eyed ancestor on either side was McGarr’s grandmother. Today, her